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PEN AND INK

"By the same Author :

The Theatres of Paris.

French Dramatists of the iqth Century.

In Partnership: Studies in Story-telung
(v)itb //. C Bunner).

The Last Meeting, A Story.

A Secret of the Sea, &c.

Check and Countercheck : a Tale of
Twenty-five Hours.

(witb George //. Jessop).

PEN AND INK

PAPERS ON SUBJECTS OF MORE OR LESS

IMPORTANCE

BRANDER MATTHEWS

LONDON '
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

AND New-York: 15 East i6TH Street

1888

[all rights rbsbrvbd.]

/^/oyt/^

r^'

E. L BURLINGAME

M GRATITUDE FOR COUNSEL

PREFACE

The author desires to declare here
his belief that this is the most in-
teresting, the most entertaining, and
the most instructive book of the dec-
ade: — his reasons for making this
bold assertion in this place will be
found fully set forth on pp. 50-66.

B. M.

NOTE

The first three papers were printed originally
in Longman's Magapne. Certain of the points
made in the * Philosophy of the Short-Story '
were first presented briefly in the Saturday Revuw
in the summer of 1884: the present more elabo-
rate essay was published in LippincoWs Magazine
for October, 1885. The chapters on Mr. Frederick
Locker and Mr. Austin Dobson and on the ^ Songs
of the Civil -War' were written for the Cen-
tury, The paper on the * French which is spoken
by those who do not speak French/ appears now,
for the first time, in its present form, but it con-
tains passages from briefer articles contributed
during the past ten years to the Nation and the
Saturday Review, the Century and the Atlantic
Monthly.

COd^TEU^TS

• • •

'*Ten and Ink" by A. Lang .... xm

I On the Antiquity of Jests /

II The Ethics of Plagiarism .... 22

III The 7rue Theory of the Preface . . . $0

IV The ^Philosophy of the Short-story . . 6y

V Two Latter-day Lyrists 95

I Frederick Locker
II Austin Dobson

VI The Songs of the Civil War .... 140

VII On the French Spoken by those who do

not Speak French i68

VIII Toker-talk 187

"An Epistle to the Author,'* by H. C. Bunner 22*]

PEN Am) INK.

Ye wanderers that were my sires.

Who read men' s fortunes in the hand.
Who voyaged with your smithy fir a

From waste to waste across the land.
Why did you leave for garth and town

Your life by heath and river's brink ?
Why lay your Gipsy freedom down

And doom your child to Pen and Ink ?

You wearied of the wild-wood meal

That crowned, or failed to crown, the day.
Too honest or too tame to steal.

You broke into the beaten way:
Vlied loom or awl like other men

cAnd learned to love the guinea's chink.
Oh, recreant sires, who doomed me then

To earn so few — with Pen and Ink 1

Where it hath fallen the tree must lie,

'Tis overrate for me to roam.
Yet the caged bird who hears the cry

Of his wild fellows fleeting home

nil

(May feel no sharper pang than mine.
Who seem to bear, whene'er I think.

Spate in the stream and wind in pine
Call me to quit dull Pen and Ink.

For then the §pirit wandering.

That sleeps within the blood, awakes;
For then the summer and the spring

I fain would meet by streams and lakes.
But ah, my birthright long is sold,

Vut custom chains me, link on link,
cAnd I must get me, as of old,

Vack to my tools, to Pen and Ink.

A. Lang.

PEN AND INK

y^^^ u^: ;

Of '..f

ORNl^

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS.

HERE are not a few very interesting
and instructive books waiting to be
written. Two goodly tomes there
are, for example, which I am anx-
ious to own, — ^the 'Anecdote His-

tory of Private Theatricals,' and 'A Historical
Treatise on Scene-Painting and Stage-Mechanism.'
Unfortunately nobody has yet thought it worth
his while to write either of them, though it would
be difficult to find anywhere two books about the
stage more entertaining, more useful, and easier
to put together. But a book which I would
receive with more welcome and review more
willingly even than these is the * Authentic Jest-
Book, chronologically arranged, with exact refer^
ences to the original authorities and a collation of
the parallel passages in other authors.' It may be
thought that of jest-books we have a many, and
that, at best, they are but dreary reading. And
so it is. But the * Authentic Jest-Book ' is wholly
unlike any other collection of jokes and gibes and

2 PEN AND INK.

repartees and witticisms; it is unlike them all,
and better than any of them. In the ordinary
gathering of merry jests, whether it be the collec-
tion of Hierocles, the Greek, or of Abou-na-wass,
the Persian, whether it be the 'Moyen de Par-
venir,' the compilation of some contemporary of
Rabelais, or the ' Gesta Romanorum ' growing
together in monkish hands, whether it be the
humorous anthology of the worthy Poggio or that
credited to the unworthy Joseph Miller, in any and
all of the recognized receptacles of the waifs and
strays of wit and humor, there is one marked,
permanent, and fatal defect : the most of the jokes
are unidentified and unauthenticated ; they are set
down as they were familiar in men's mouths at the
time when Poggio and Hierocles and the double
of Joseph Miller and their fellows went about tak-
ing notes. In other words, no effort has been
made hitherto to show the genesis of jests, and
to declare with precision and with authority just
when a given joke was first made and just what
transformations and adventures it has since under-
gone.

The jest-book I want is one giving chapter and
verse for every laugh in it. In ' L'Esprit dans
THistoire' and in 'L'Esprit des Autres,' Edouard
Foumier made an attempt along the right path ;

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 3

and he was followed aptly and promptly by
Mr. Hay ward in the essay on the 'Pearls and
Mock-Pearls of History.' Fournier and Hay ward
succeeded in showing that many an accepted witti-
cism is a very Proteus, reappearing again and again
with a change of face. Other jokes are, like Cagli- ,
ostro, turning up once in a century quite as
young as ever. There is, for instance, a story told
by Lord Stair, called the politest man in France
— because he obeyed the king's request and
jumped into the royal carriage before his majesty.
Lord Stair bore a singular resemblance to Louis
XIV., who was moved to ask him if Lord Stair's
mother had ever been to Paris ; to which Lord
Stair replied, "No, your majesty, but my father
has." The same story is told of Henri IV. and a
certain gentleman of Gascony. It can be found in
Macrobius, where it is related of a general who
came from Spain to the court of the Caesars.
Now, in the ' Authentic Jest-Book,' this anecdote
would reappear in an English translation of the
exact words of Macrobius, with a note setting
forth the revival of the retort under Henri IV. and
Louis XIV. : no doubt it has been told of many
another monarch who was the father of his people
in the fashion of the roi vert-galanL Moore, as
in duty bound, sets down Sheridan's light-hearted

4 PEN AND INK.

jest while he watched the burning of Drury Lane
Theatre from the coffee-house where he was sip-
ping a glass of sherry — " Surely a man may take
a glass of wine at his own fireside 1 " This is a
saying quite worthy of Sheridan, and one which
he was quite capable of making ; but Moore, with
a wise scepticism, suggested that it *' may have
been, for aught I know, like the Wandering Jew,
a regular attendant upon all fires since the time of
Hierocles."

There is, indeed, a metempsychosis of profes-
sional jokes. A merry jest about a preacher or
a player or a physician is reincarnated in every
generation. It is like royalty, it never dies — Le
roi est morti Vive le roi! Garrick's death eclipses
the gayety of nations, but the stroke of humor
which told for or against Garrick soon tells for or
against Grimaldi. By a sort of apostolic succes-
sion, the anecdotes about a popular clergyman pass
to the clergyman who succeeds him in popularity.
Two of these perennial tales — one about a player,
and the other about a preacher — have had an excep-
tionally strong hold on life. In the first a severe
hypochondriac consults a physician, who advises
recreation: "You should see Listonl" "I am
Liston ! " answers the severe hypochondriac. This
is told of Grimaldi and of many another comic

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 5

performer before and since his time. The earliest
instance I have been able to find is in connec-
tion with Dominique, the famous arlequin of the
Comedie-Italienne under Louis XIV. Arlequin
Dominique was ready of speech, as an anecdote
proves which has yet only one hero : the monarch
was fond of the mimic, and seeing him thirsty one
day, bade a servant give him a goblet filled to the
brim. Now the goblet was of gold, so Arlequin
slyly queried, " And the wine, too, your majesty ?"
But this is a digression.

The second story relates to a certain popular
preacher, who on a sultry summer morning arose
in his pulpit and wiped his forehead and said, *' It
is damned hot ! " And when the congregation
were properly shocked into wakefulness, he said,
"Such were the words which met my ears this
morning as I entered this house of worship ! " and
then he proceeded to preach a vigorous sermon
against the sin of profanity. In the article which
an important London weekly devoted to the cele-
bration of Mr. Spurgeon's fifty years of ministry,
this saying and this sermon were placed in the
mouth of Mr. Spurgeon. In the United States
Mr. Henry Ward Beecher was generally supposed
to have said them — there are not wanting those
who declare that they heard him — in spite of the

6 PEN AND INK.

eloquent protests and denial of his sister, Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe. But Rowland Hill pre-
ceded both Mr. Beecher and Mr. Spurgeon as the
protagonist of this little sacred play ; and Robert
Hall had appeared in the part before Rowland Hill.
Who the real originator may be will not be known
with certainty until the 'Authentic Jest-Book'
appears.

One class of anecdote should be excluded scru-
pulously from my model collection. It is the
anecdote unvouched for by a recognizable proper
name as one of the dramatis personce. It is the
anecdote which relates us the faits et gestes of * ' a
certain Oxford scholar" or "a well-known wit"
or ' * a foolish fellow." These anonymous tales are
as unworthy of credence as an anonymous letter.
A merry jest ought always to be accompanied by
the name of the hero, necessarily for publication
and as a guarantee of good faith. When the tale
is tagged to a man whose name we know, investi-
gation is possible and we may get at the truth.
But these nameless stories are of no country and
of no century — rather are they of all nations and
of all times. It has been well said that Irish bulls
were calves in Greece. There is a familiar Irish
anecdote, not to be told here, though innocent
enough, which turns on the continuance of the

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 7

pattering of the rain-drops. This was confided
to me a few years ago in America as the latest
importation from the Emerald Isle. A year later,
I read it in one of the ten volumes of the ' His-
toriettes' of Tallemant des Reaux, who flourished
in the middle of the seventeenth century. The
next summer, I happened to choose for my light
reading 'Le Moyen de Parvenir,' attributed by
most to Beroalde de Varville, although it may pos-
sibly be, in part at . least, the work of Rabelais ;
and in this collection, put together in the sixteenth
century, again I found my Irish story, — Gascon,
this time, I think ; certainly no longer Hibernian.
It is characteristic of the transmigration of tales,
that the story which we find first in the * Moyen
de Parvenir,' avowedly a work of fiction, reappears
a hundred years later in the Memoirs of Tallemant
as a fact. It is a wise anecdote that knows its
own father.

To another French collection, the ' Contes du
Sieur Galliard,' by Tabourot des Accords, Mr.
Richard Grant White has traced one of the most
amusing stanzas of * Yankee Doodle ' —

Yankee Doodle came to town
And wore his striped trowsis ;

Said he couldn't see the town,
There were so many houses.

8 PEN AND INK.

The French ancestor is: *'Chascun me disoit
que je verrois une si grande et belle ville ; mais
on se mocquoit de moi ; car on ne le peut voir i
cause de la multitude des maisons qui empechent
la veOe." And I think there is an even older
English saying to the effect that one could not see
the forest for the trees.

There is no need here to enter on the vexed
question of plagiarism, though it is very tempt-
ing at all times. One chapter of the ' History of
Plagiarism' — another of the interesting books
waiting to be written — must contain many facts
of interest tending to show the survival of humor.
Almost the oldest literary monument in the his-
tory of the French comedy is the ' Farce de Maitre
Pierre Pathelin ' ; it is as primitive and as positive
in its humor as a play can be. An adaptation of
it under the name of 'L'Avocat Pathelin' was
made by Brueys and Palaprat, in accordance with
the canons of French dramatic art which obtained
in the eighteenth century. From ' L'Avocat Pathe-
lin ' was taken an English farce, the ' Village
Lawyer,' brought out at Drury Lane under the
management of David Garrick. The ' Village
Lawyer ' kept the stage for nearly a century, and
the last time it was acted in New-York Mr. Joseph
Jefferson took the chief part. A perversion of the

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 9

'Village Lawyer/ under the title of the * Great
Sheep Case,' has been made for the use of the
ruder and more boisterous actors who perform in
the entertainments known, for some inscrutable
reason, as Variety Shows. Thus it happens that
one of the earliest comic plays of France still keeps
the stage in America — as strong an instance of
the tenacity of humor as one could wish.

When a story is authenticated by a proper name
we are inclined to treat it with more respect than
when it is a mere bastard with no right to a
patronymic. There has recently been put into
circulation in America an anecdote sharpened to
the same point as an anecdote recorded in the his-
trionic biographies of the last century ; but the
proper names which appear in both versions lead
one to believe that there has been no wilful in-
fringement of copyright. Foote was forever gird-
ing at Garrick's parsimony — very unjustly, for
Garrick was careful of the pence only that he
might have pounds to lend and to give. Garrick
dropped a guinea once and sought it in vain, until
he gave up the search, saying petulantly, "I be-
lieve it has gone to the devil ! " Whereupon
Foote remarked that Davy could make a guinea go
farther than any one else. This is the tale as told
in the last century in the Old World. Here is the

lO PEN AND INK.

tale as told in the New World in this century.
When Mr. William M. Evarts was Secretary of
State he went with a party to see the Natural
Bridge in Virginia, not very far from the capi-
tal. Somebody repeated the tradition that George
Washington once threw a silver dollar over the
bridge — a very remarkable feat of strength and
skill. " In those days," was the comment of Mr.
Evarts, "in those days a dollar went so much
farther than it does now ! " Although the point
is the same on which the two tales turn, they
impress one as of quite independent invention ;
we may doubt whether Mr. Evarts, who has a
merry wit of his own, ever heard of Foote's gibe.
When, however, the story is not vouched for
by a proper name, the probability is that the suc-
cessive reappearances of an anecdote are due to a
survival in oral tradition. There is in America a
familiar tale, summed up in the phrase '* Let the
other man walk 1 " It relates that a traveller in a
hotel was kept awake long past midnight by a
steady tramp, tramp, tramp, on the floor over
him. At last he went upstairs and asked what
the matter might be. The occupant of the upper
room said that he owed money to another man for
which he had given a note, and the note came
due on the morrow and he could not meet it.

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 1 1

** Are you certain that you cannot pay your debt?"
asked the visitor. '* Alas, I cannot," replied the
debtor. ''Then/' said the visitor, "if it cannot
be helped, lie down and go to sleep — and let the
other man walk ! " Now this is a mere Ameri-
canization of a story of Poggio's of an inhabitant
of Perugia, who walked in melancholy because
he could not pay his debts. '* Vah, stulte," was
the advice given him, " leave anxiety to your
creditors 1 "

Another well-worn American anecdote describes
the result of owning both a parrot and a monkey.
When the owner of the bird and the beast comes
home one day, he finds the monkey decked with
red and green feathers, but he does not find the
parrot for a long while. At last, the bird appears
from an obscure comer plucked bare save a single
tail-feather; he hops upon his perch with such
dignity as he can muster and says, with infinite
pathos, " Oh, we have had a hell of a time 1" At
first nothing could seem more American than
this, but there is a story essentially the same
in Walpole's Letters. Yet another parrot story
popular in New-York, where a well-known wit
happens to be a notorious stutterer, is as little
American as this of Walpole'^. The stutterer is
supposed to ask the man who offers the parrot for

12 PEN AND INK.

•

sale if it c-c-c-can t-t-t-talk. *Mf it could not talk
better than you Td wring its neck," is the ven-
der's indignant answer. I found this only the
other day in Buckland's ' Curiosities of Natural
History,' first published nearly a quarter of a cen-
tury ago ; and since this paper was first published
a contributor to the Dramatic Review has traced it
back to Henry Philips's ' Recollections.'

The two phrases, **let the other man walk"
and "we have had a hell of a time," have passed
into proverbs in America. The anecdotes in which
they are enshrined happened to tickle the fancy
of the American people most prodigiously. There
is in them, as they are now told in the United
States, a certain dryness and directness and sub-
tlety and extravagance — four qualities character-
istic of much of the American humor which is one
of the most abundant of our exports. In nothing
is the note of nationality more distinct than in
jokes. The delicate indelicacies of M. Grevin are
hardly more un-English than the extravagant vaga-
ries of the wild humorists of the boundless prairies
of the West. In Hebrew I am informed and be-
lieve the pun is a legitimate figure of lofty rhetoric,
and in England I have observed it is the staple of
comic effort ; in America most of us are intolerant
of the machine-made pun. To be acceptable to

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 13

the American mind the pun must have an element
of unexpected depravity — like Dr. Holmes's im-
mortal play on a word when he explains to us that
an onion is like an organ because it smell odious.
As a rule, however, the native American humorist
eschews all mere juggling with double meanings.
He strives to attain an imaginative extravagance,
recalling rather Rabelais than the more decorous
contributors to the collection of Mr. Punch. Arte-
mus Ward suggests quietly that it would have
been money in Jeflf. Davis's pocket if he had never
been born. Mark Twain in an answer to a corre-
spondent recommends fish as a brain-food, and
after considering the contributions proffered by the
correspondent, indicates as his proper diet two
whales — not necessarily large whales, just ordinary
ones. But one of the best characters Mark Twain
ever sketched from life, Colonel Mulberry Sellers,
is almost exactly like a character in Ben Jonson's
' The Devil is an Ass.' And Charles Lamb and
Sydney Smith would have felt a thrill of delight at
meeting the man who wanted to run up to Rome
from Civita Vecchia that he might have ' twenty
minutes in the Eternal City.' Indeed, if Mark
Twain had only been a parson, he might have
written singularly like unto the merry curate who
once lived five miles from a lemon. Perhaps the

14 PEN AND INK.

Strict theological training would have checked that
tendency to apparent irreverence which leads
Americans to speak disrespectfully of the equator.
I think this irreverence is more apparent than
actual. Americans are brought up on the Bible,
and they use the familiar phrases of the authorized
version without intent of irreverence. I have
seen an Englishman shocked at passages in the
*Biglow Papers' "which an American accepted
without hesitation or thought of eviL

Perhaps the most marked of the four chief char-
acteristics of contemporary American humor —
dryness, directness, subtlety, and extravagance —
is a compound of the two latter into something
very closely resembling imagination. An Ameri-
can reviewer of Mr. John Ashton's ' Humor, Wit,
and Satire of the Seventeenth Century' — a most
useful work, by the way, to whosoever shall
undertake hereafter the editing of the ' Authentic
Jest-Book' — drew attention to the unlikeness of
the mere telling of an incident — possibly comic
enough in its happening, but vapid and mirthless
beyond measure when it is set down in cold print
— the unlikeness of this sort of comic tale to the
more imaginative anecdotes now in favor in Amer-
ican newspapers. The reviewer copied from Mr.
Ashton's book a comic tale taken from the * Sack-

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 1 5

ful of Newes/ published in 1673, ^^^ set over
against it a little bit of the paragraphic humor
which floats hither and thither on the shifting
waves of American journalism. Here is the merry
jest of two centuries ago :

'* A certain butcher was flaying a calf at night,
and had stuck a lighted candle upon his head,
because he would be the quicker about his busi-
ness, and when he had done he thought to take
the same candle to light him to bed ; but he had
forgot whiere he had set it, and sought about the
house for it, and all the while it stuck in his cap
upon his head and lighted him in seeking it. At
the last one of his fellows came and asked him
what he sought for. * Marry (quoth he), I look
for the candle which I did flay the calf withal.'
' Why, thou fool,' qd. he, * thou has a candle in_
thy cap.' And then he felt towards his cap, and
took away the candle burning, whereat there was
great laughing and he mocked for his labor, as he
was well worthy."
And here is the journalistic joke of our own day :
" A colored individual who went down on the
slippery flags at the comer of. Woodward Avenue
and Congress Street, scrambled up and backed out
into the street, and took a long look towards the
roof of the nearest bqilding.

1 6 PEN AND INK.

* You fell from that third-story window ! '
remarked a pedestrian who had witnessed the
tumble.

' Boss, I believes yer ! ' was the prompt reply ;
' but what puzzles me am de queshun of how I
got up dar, an' why I was leanin' outer de
winder!'"

Of course neither of these tales would find a
place in the 'Authentic Jest-Book,' for the first is a
fiat telling of a flat fact and the second is an obvi-
ous invention of the enemy. But they are valuable
as indications of the steady and increasing evolu-
tion of humor. Even if the merry jest about the
butcher and his candle had been ennobled by a
great name, it would have gone to the wall as one
of the weakest jokes known to the student of the
history of humor. The doctrine of the survival
of the fittest in the struggle for existence is as
applicable to jests as it is to other entities. A given
joke develops best in a given environment — a
pun, for example, has more chance of life in Eng-
land, a bit of imaginative extravagance in America,
and a gibe at matrimonial infelicity or infidelity in
France. It would be a great step gained if we
could get at the primordial germs of wit or dis-
cover the protoplasm of humor.

Certain jests, like certain myths, exist in variants

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 1 7

in all parts of the world. Comparative mytholo-
gists are diligently collecting the scattered folk-
lore of all races ; why should they not also be
gathering together the primitive folk-humor?
Cannot some comparative philologist reconstruct
for us the original jest-book of the Aryan people?
It would be very interesting to know the exact
stock of jokes our forefathers took with them in
their migrations from the mighty East. It would
be most instructive to be informed just how far
they had got in the theory and practice of humor.
It would be a pure joy to discover precisely what
might be the original fund of root-jests laughed at
by Teuton and Latin and Hindoo before these races
were differentiated one from another by time and
travel and climate. I-wonder whether the pastoral
Aryan knew, and loved an early form of Lamb's
favorite comic tale, the one in which a mad wag
asks the rustic whether that is his own hare or a
wig ? And what did the dark-haired Iberian laugh
at before the tall blonde Aryan drove him into the
corners of Europe ? It was probably some practical
joke or other, in which a bone knife or a flint
arrow-head played the chief part. The records of
the Semitic race are familiar to us, but we know
nothing or next to nothing about the primitive
humor of the alleged Turanians.

1 8 PEN AND INK.

When this good work is well in hand, and when
the collector of comic orts and ends is prepared to
make his report, there might be held an Interna-
tional Exhibition of Jokes, which would be quite
as useful and quite as moral as some of the Inter-
national Exhibitions we have had of late years. I
think I should spend most of my time in the Retro-
spective Section studying the antique jests. *' Old
as a circus joke" might be a proverb, and the
Christmas pantomime and the Christy Minstrel
can supply jokes both practical and otherwise,
quite as fatigued and as hoary with age as those
of the circus. Among its many advantages this
International Exhibition of Jokes would have one
of great importance — it would forever dispel the
belief in the saying of one of old that there were
only thirty-eight good stories in existence, and
that thirty-seven of these could not be told
before ladies. There might have been some
foundation for this saying in the days when the
ladies had to leave the table after dinner because
the conversation of the gentlemen then became
unfit for their ears. While a good joke should
be like a pin, in that it should come to a head
soon and be able to stand on its point, yet only
too many sorry jests are rather to be defined
as unlike a mathematical line, in that they have
breadth as well as length.

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF JESTS. 19

It is perhaps owing to the existence of stories
of this sort that woman has lost the faculty of
story-telling. Of course, I do not mean that the
fair sex are not felicitous at fiction ; the Schehera-
zades of the serials would confute me at once. I
mean that women do not amuse each other by the
exchange of anecdote as men are wont to do.
They do not retail the latest good thing. They
chat, gossip, giggle, converse, talk, and amuse
themselves easily together, but they do not swop
stories in man-fashion. Where man is objective,
woman is subjective. She is satisfied with her own
wit, without need of colporting the humor of a
stranger. Woman's wit has sex. It is wholly dif-
ferent from man's wit. From Beatrice (though
she was said to take hers from the *C. Merry
Tales') to Mrs. Poyser (who gave us that marvel-
lous definition of a conceited man as one who was
like the cock that thought the sun rose to hear him
crow), the bright women of fiction have been witty
rather than humorous. It may be that the dis-
tinction between wit and humor is one of sex after
all. I have a friend — he is an editor — who de-
clares that the difference between wit and humor,
and again between talent and genius, is only the
difference between the raspberry and the straw-
berry. Doubtless God might have made a better
berry than the strawberry, and doubtless God

20 PEN AND INK.

might have given man a better gift than humor —
but he never did. Woman has not the full gift;
she has wit and some humor, it is true, but she
has only a slighter sense of humor, whence comes
much marital unhappiness. As George Eliot tells
us, "a difference of taste in jests is a great strain
of the affections."

It is said that the rustic, both the male and the
female of that peculiar species, has a positive hos-
tility to a new joke. I do not believe this. Of a
certainty it is not true of the American of New
England, who is as humorous in his speech as he
is shrewd in his business dealings, and the more
humor he has the less sharp he is in trade and the
less severe in his views as to the necessity of work.
We may cite in proof of this Mrs. Stowe's delight-
ful portrait of that village ne'er-do-well, Sam Law-
son. And I doubt if it is true of the English rustic
as he really is, for we know it is not true of him as
he appears in the pages of George Eliot and of Mr.
Thomas Hardy. There he has a mother-wit of his
own, and although fond of the old joke, the mean-
ing of which has been fully fathomed, he is not
intolerant of a new quip or a fresh gibe. What he
cannot abide is a variation in the accepted form
of an accepted anecdote. This he will none of — as
a child resolutely rejects the slightest deviation

vb^: ^.

ON THE ANTIQUITY 0FSlgSt5t^,^[ . , ^gl

from the canonical version of the fairy-tale with
which she is fondly familiar. The rustic and the
child are loyal to old friends, whether it be The
Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, or Brer Rabbit and
the Tar-Baby, or Old Grouse in the Gunroom, at
which honest Diggory had laughed these twenty
years, and which now, alas ! is utterly lost to the
knowledge of man, even Goldsmith's latest and
most learned biographer confessing perforce that
he has been wholly unable to recover it from out
the darkness of the past.

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.

HEN Sir Walter Scott came to consider
' Gil Bias,' and the alleged plagiarisms
it contains from the Spanish story-
tellers, he spoke with the frankness
and sturdy sense which were two of
his chief characteristics. "Le Sage's claim to
originality in this delightful work," he wrote,
"has been idly, I had almost said ungratefully,
contested by those critics who conceive they de-
tect a plagiarist wherever they see a resemblance
in the general subject of the work to one which
has been before treated by an inferior artist. It is
a favorite theme of laborious dulness to trace out
such coincidences ; because they appear to reduce
genius of the higher order to the usual standard
of humanity, and, of course, to bring the author
nearer a level with his critics. It is not the mere
outline of a story, not even the adopting some
. details of a former author, which constitutes the

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.

literary crime of plagiarism. The proprietor of the
pit from whence Chantrey takes his clay might as
well pretend to a right in the figure into w.hich it
is moulded under his plastic fingers ; and the ques-
tion is in both cases the same — not so much from
whom the original substance came, as to whom
it owes that which constitutes its real merit and
excellence."

In his delightful paper on Gray, Mr. Lowell de-
clares that " we do not ask where people got their
hints, but what they made out of them." Mr.
Lowell, 1 doubt me, is speaking for himself alone,
and for the few others who attempt the higher
criticism with adequate insight, breadth, and
equipment. Only too many of the minor critics
have no time to ask what an author has done, they
are so busy in asking where he may have got his
hints. Thus it is that the air is full of accusations
of plagiary , and the bringing of these accusations is
a disease which bids fair to become epidemic in
literary journalism. Perhaps this is a sign, or at
least a symptom, of the intellectual decadence of
our race which these same critics sometimes vent-
ure to announce. In the full flood of a creative
period people cannot pause to consider petty
charges of plagiarism. Greene's violent outbreak
against the only Shakescene of them all, who had

PEN AND INK.

decked himself out in their feathers, seems to have
excited little or no attention. Nowadays, a pam-
phlet like Greene's last dying speech and confes-
sion would serve as a text for many a leading article
and for many a magazine essay.

''There is, I fear," wrote Lord Tennyson to Mr.
Dawson, a year or two ago, ** a prosaic set grow-
ing up among us, editors of booklets, bookworms,
index-hunters, or men of great memories and no
imagination who impute themselves to the poet,
and so believe that he, too, has no imagination,
but is forever poking his nose between the pages
of some old volumes in order to see what he can
appropriate. " A pleasant coincidence of thought is
to be noted between these words of Lord Tenny-
son and the remarks of Sir Walter Scott about * Gil
Bias.' Both poets think ill of the laborious dulness
of the literary detective, and suggest that he is actu-
ated by malice in judging others by himself. The
police detective is akin to the spy, and although
his calling is often useful, and perhaps even neces-
sary, we are not wont to choose him as our bosom
friend ; the amateur literary detective is an almost
useless person, who does for pleasure the dirty
work by which the real detective gets his bread.

The great feat of the amateur literary detective
is to run up parallel columns, and this he can ac-

THE ETHiCS OF PLAGIARISM.

complish with the agility of an acrobat. When
first invented, the setting of parallel passages side
by side was a most ingenious device, deadly to an
i impostor or to a thief caught in the very act of

literary larceny. But these parallel passages must
be prepared with exceeding care, and with the
utmost certainty. Unless the matter on the one
side exactly balance the matter on the other side,
like the packs on a donkey's back, the burden is
likely to fall about the donkey's feet, and he may
chance to break his neck. Parallel columns should
be most sparingly used, and only in cases of abso-
lute necessity. As they are employed now only
too often, they are quite inconclusive ; and it has
been neatly remarked that they are perhaps like
parallel lines, in that they would never meet,
however far produced. Nothing can be more
puerile, childish, infantine even, than the eager-
ness with which the amateur literary detective
shows, to his own complete satisfaction, that two
of the most original authors who ever wrote —
Shakspere and Moliere — were barefaced borrowers
and convicted plagiarists. There are not a few
other of his deeds almost as silly as this. I won-
der that the secure ass (the phrase is from the
' Merry Wives of Windsor,' and not mine, I regret
tQ say) who thinks that Sheridan took his ' Rivals'

26 PEN AND INK.

from Smollett's * Humphrey Clinker ' and his
• School for Scandal ' from his mother's ' Memoirs
of Miss Sydney Biddulph ' — the absurd persons
who have gravely doubted whether Mr. Stevenson
did not find the suggestion of his ' Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ' in Hawthorne's ' Dr.
Grimshawe's Secret' — and the malicious folk who
have been accusing Mr. Haggard with filching the
false teeth and lifting the white calves of other
African explorers who were not in search of King
Solomon's mines-*- 1 wonder that the amateur lit-
erary detective of this sort has never seen what a
strong case can be made out against M. Alphonse
Daudet (a notorious imitator of Dickens, it may be
remembered) for having extracted the 'Rois en
Exile ' from the third paragraph of the first chapter
of the ' History of Henry Esmond,' and against Mr.
Thackeray for having derived this passage from
his recollections of a scene in Voltaire's * Candide.'
It was the original owner of King Solomon's
mines who asserted that there was nothing new
under the sun ; and after the lapse of hundreds of
years one may suggest that a ready acceptance of
the charge of plagiarism is a sign of low culture,
and that a frequent bringing of the accusation is
a sign of defective education and deficient intelli-
gence. Almost the first discovery of a student of

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.

letters is that the history of literature is little more
than a list of curious coincidences. The folk-tales
which lie at the foundation of all fiction are almost
the same the wide world over, from the Eskimo
at the top of North America to the Zulu at the tip of
South Africa ; they can hardly have had a common
source, and there are few traces of conscious bor-
rowing or of unconscious lending.

These folk-tales are as ancient as they are wide-
spread, and when Uncle Remus relates the advent-
ures of Brer Rabbit and Brer Terrapin, he is re-
peating a variant of adventures which were told
in Greece before Homer sang. And as these folk-
tales were made each by itself and yet alike, in
many places and at all ages of the world, so in
more formal literature do we find stories strangely
similar one to another, and yet independently in-
vented. People have always been ready, like the
Athenians of old, to hear or to tell some new
thing — and the new thing, when dissected, is
soon seen to be an old thing. The tales have all
been told. If we were to take from the goodman
La Fontaine the contes which had had another
owner before he found them by the highway, he
would be left like a Manx cat or the flock of Little
Bo-Peep. There are some situations, primitive
and powerful, which recur in all literatures with

28 PEN AND INK.

the inevitable certainty of the fate which domi-
nates them. What is the ' Hamlet ' of Shakspere,
in its essence, but the * Orestes ' trilogy of i^schy-
lus ? And what man shall be bold enough to claim
for himself or for another the first use of the Hidden
Will, of the Infants-changed-at-Nurse, or of the
Stern-Parent-who-cuts-off-his-Son-with-a-Shilling?
After recording a slight similarity of subject and
of point of view between the 'Famille Benoiton'
of M. Victorien Sardou and the 'Young Mrs. Win-
throp' of Mr. Bronson Howard, Mr. William
Archer remarks pertinently that ** in the domain
of the drama there is no such thing as private
property in the actual soil ; all that the playwright
can demand is security for his improvements," and
he adds that "were tenure in fee-simple permis-
sible, the whole cultivable area would long ago
have been occupied by a syndicate of pestilent
land-grabbers, named Menander, Calderon, Shak-
spere & Co., and the dramatist of to-day would
have had no resource save emigration to some
other planet." I have read that Schiller in the last
century, and Scribe in this, made out a list of all
the possible dramatic situations, and that both lists
were surprisingly brief. M. Zola's admirable defi-
nition of art is "Nature seen through a tempera-
ment" ; and the most a man may bring nowadays

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.

is his temperament, his personal equation, his
own pair of spectacles, through which he may
study the passing show in his own way.

As it is with situations which are the broad
effects of the drama or the novel or the poem, so
it is with the descriptions and the dialogue which
make the smaller effects. Words are more abun-
dant than situations, but they are wearing out
with hard usage. Language is finite, and its com-
binations are not countless. *Mt is scarcely pos-
sible for any one to say or write anything in this
late time of the world to which, in the rest of the
literature of the world, a parallel could not be
found somewhere," so Lord Tennyson declared in
the letter from which I have already quoted.
** Are not human eyes all over the world looking
at the same objects, and must there not conse-
quently be coincidences of thought and impres-
sions and expressions ?" The laureate was not at
all surprised to be told that there were two lines
in a certain Chinese classic (of which he had never
heard) exactly like two of his. Once I found an
exceedingly close translation of one of Lord Tenny-
son's lines in a French comedy in verse, and when
I asked the dramatist about it, I soon saw that he
did not know anything about the English poem, —
or even about the English poet.

PEN AND INK.

In cases like these there is no need to dispute
the good faith of the author who may chance to be
hter in point of time. *' When a person of fair char-
acter for literary honesty uses an image such as
another has employed before him, the presump-
tion is that he has struck upon it independently,
or unconsciously recalled it, supposing it his
own," said the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
After this dictum in ethics, Dr. Holmes enunciated
a subtle psychologic truth, which is known to all
conscientious writers, and which should be made
known to all amateur literary detectives: **It is
impossible to tell, in a great many cases, whether
* a comparison which suddenly suggests itself is a
new conception or a recollection. I told you the
other day that 1 never wrote a line of verse that
seemed to me comparatively good but it appeared
old at once, and often as if it has been borrowed."
Sheridan bears witness to the same effiect in the
preface to the * Rivals,' when he says that *' faded
ideas float in memory like half-forgotten dreams ;
and the imagination in its fullest enjoyments be-
comes suspicious of its offspring, and doubts
whether it has created or adopted." Perhaps the
testimony of Sheridan is not altogether beyond
suspicion ; he had an easy conscience and a mar-
vellous faculty of assimilation, and it may be that

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.

he was apologetically making the plea of con-
fession and avoidance, as the lawyers call it.
But 1 think that Lord Tennyson, Sir Walter Scott,
and Mr. Lowell are unimpeachable witnesses. It
is with malice prepense that I have quoted from
them frequently and at length, and perhaps in
excess, that I might establish my case not out of
my own mouth, but out of theirs.

After all, there is little need to lay stress on the
innocence of many if not most of the coincidences
with which the history of literature is studded.
The garden is not large, and those who cultivate it
must often walk down the same path, sometimes
side by side, and sometimes one after another,
even though the follower neither wishes nor in-
tends to tread on his predecessor's heels or to
walk in his footsteps. They may gather a nose-
gay of the same flowers of speech. They may
even pluck the same passion-flower, not knowing
that any one has ever before broken a blossom
from that branch. Indeed, when we consider
how small the area is, how few are the possible
complications of plot, how easily the poetic vocab-
ulary is exhausted, the wonder is really, not that
there are so many parallel passages, but that there
are so few. In the one field which is not circum-
scribed there is very little repetition : human

PEN AND INK.

nature is limitless, and characters comparatively
rarely pass from one book to another. The
dramatists and the romancers have no choice but
to treat anew as best they may the well-worn
incidents and the weary plots ; the poets happen
on the same conceits generation after generation ;
but the dramatists and the romancers and the
poets know that there is no limit to the variety of
man, and that human nature is as deep and as
boundless and as inexhaustible as the ocean. No
matter how heavy a draft Shakspere and Moliere
may have made, no matter how skilfully and how
successfully Dickens and Thackeray may have
angled, no matter how great the take of Haw-
thorne and Poe, there are still as good fish in the
sea of humanity as ever were caught. And I
offer this fact, that we do not find the coincidence
in character which we cannot help seeing in plot
and in language, as a proof that most apparent
plagiarism is quite unconscious and due chiefly to
the paucity of material.

Hitherto I have considered only the similarity
which was unconscious. Originality is difficult ;
it is never accidental ; and it is to be obtained only
by solitary confinement and hard labor. To make
his fiction out of whole cloth, to spin his net,
spider-like, out of himself, is one of the highest

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.

achievements of the intellect. Only a rare genius
may do this, and he must do it rarely. A man
may always draw from the common stock without
compunction, and there are many circumstances
under which he may borrow unhesitatingly from
other authors. For example, Mr. Haggard has
recently been encompassed about by a cloud of
false witnesses, accusing him of having plagiarized
certain episodes of his story, * King Solomon's
Mines,' from a certain book of travels. He prompt-
ly denied the charge, and of course it fell to the
ground at once. But had he done wbat he was
accused of doing, there would have been no harm
in it. Mr. Haggard, in writing a romance of Africa,
would have been perfectly justified in using the
observations and experiences of African travellers.
Facts are the foui^ation of fiction, and the novelist
and the romancer, the dramatist and the poet, may
make free with labors of the traveller, the his-
torian, the botanist, and the astronomer. Within
reason, the imaginative author may help himself
to all that the scientific author has stored up. One
might even go so far as to say that science — in
which I include history — exists to supply facts for
fiction, and that it has not wholly accomplished its
purpose until it has been transmuted in the im-
agination of the poet. If Mr. Haggard had made

PEN AND INK.

use of a dozen books of African travel in the com-
position of that thrilling and delightful romance of
adventure, * King Solomon's Mines,' there would
have been no more taint of plagiary about it than
there was in Shakspere's reworking of the old
chronicles into his historical plays.

Shakspere and Moliere borrowed from Plautus,
as Plautus had borrowed from Menander ; and this
again is not plagiarism. Every literary worker has
a right to draw from the accumulated store of the
past, so long as he does not attempt to conceal
what he has done nor to take credit for what is not
his own invention, and so long as he has wholly
absorbed and assimilated and steeped in his own
gray matter what he has derived from his prede-
cessors. The elder Dumas has told us how he
found some of the scattered elements of his virile
and vigorous drama 'Henri III.' in Anquetil and in
Scott and in Schiller; but the play is his, none the
less ; and this was no plagiarism, for he had mixed
himself, with what he borrowed, "an incalculable
increment," asMr. Lowell said of Gray. ' Henri III.'
lives with its own life, which Dumas gave it, and
which is as different as possible from the life of
the fragments of Anquetil, Scott, and Schiller, each
of these again differing one from the other. It
was as unlike as may be to that merely literary

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.

imitation which Hawthorne compared to a plaster
cast.

Another French dramatist, M. Sardou, had prof-
ited by the reading of Poe's * Purloined Letter'
when he sat down to plan his * Pattes de Mouche ';
but it is absurd to talk of plagiary here, and to call
M. Sardou's charming comedy a dramatization of
Poe's short story, for, although the bare essential
idea is the same, the development is radically dif-
ferent. And in like manner Poe found an incident
in Mr. Mudford's 'Iron Shroud' which probably
suggested to him his own appalling tale of the
*Pit and the Pendulum.' Here what Poe took from
Mr. Mudford was very little compared with what
he contributed himself ; and in any discussion of
plagiarism quite the most important question is
the relative value to the borrower of the thing
borrowed. If he has flocks of his own, he may
lift the ewe lamb of his neighbor, and only labori-
ous dulness will object. The plagiarist, in fact, is
the man who steals his brooms ready made, be-
cause he does not know how to make them.
Dumas and M. Sardou and Poe were men having
a highly developed faculty of invention, and seek-
ing originality diligently. Those from whom they
borrowed have no more right to claim the resulting
works than has the spectator who lends a coin to a

36 PEN AND INK.

conjurer a right to consider himself a partner in the
ingenious trick the conjurer performs with it. If
this be plagiary, make the most of it. Let us all
wish for more of it. And this reminds me of a
little story, as Lincoln used to say: in the darkest
days of our war, when defeat followed defeat, and
Grant alone was victorious at Vicksburg, some
busybody went to Lincoln and told him that Grant
drank whiskey. "Does he ? " said the President,
gravely. "Do you happen to know what kind of
whiskey it is ? Because I should like to send a
barrel of it to some of the other generals."

"Far indeed am I from asserting that books, as
well as nature, are not, and ought not to be, sug-
gestive to the poet," wrote Lord Tennyson. " I am
sure that I myself and many others find a peculiar
charm in those passages of such great masters as
Virgil or Milton, where they adopt the creation of
a bygone poet, and reclothe it, more or less, ac-
cording to their fancy." Wordsworth said that
Gray helped himself from everybody and every-
where ; but what Gray made out of these old bits
borrowed from others was a new poem, and it was
his own. In the latest editions of Gray's poems, as
Mr. Lowell has put it picturesquely," The thin line
of text stands at the top of the page like cream,
and below it is the skim-milk drawn from many

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.

milky mothers of the herd out .of which it has
risen." It was because the author of 'Evangeline'
followed the example of the author of the 'Elegy'
that Poe was able to write his foolish paper on
*Mr. Longfellow and other Plagiarists' — a wanton
attack which Longfellow bore with beautiful seren-
ity. One must set a plagiarist to cry '* Stop thief! "
and Poe was not above stealing his brooms, or at
least his smaller brushes, ready made. We may
absolve him for levying on Mudford for the 'Pit and
the Pendulum,' but in his 'Marginalia' he retailed
as his own Sheridan's joke about the phoenix and
Whitbread's poulterer's description of it.

I believe that both Ben Jonson and the elder
Dumas defended their forays into the marches of
their elders, and even of their contemporaries, by
the bold assertion that genius does not steal, it
conquers. And there is force in the plea. Genius
takes by right of eminent domain, and rectifies its
frontier by annexing outlying territory, making
fruitful that which before was but a barren waste.
In literature, that is his at last who makes best use
of it. And here is the essence of the controversy
in a nutshell : it is plagiarism for an author to take
anything from another author and reproduce it
nakedly ; but it is. not necessarily plagiarism if he
reclothes it and dresses it up anew. If the second

38 PEN AND INK.

comer can improve on the work of the first comer,
if he makes it over and makes it better, and
makes it his own, we accept the result and ask no
questions. But if he make no change, or if he
make a change for the worse, we send for the
police at once. A man may be allowed to keep
his borrowed brats, if he clothe them and feed
them and educate them, and if he make no
attempt to disguise them, and if he is not guilty
of the fatal mistake of disfiguring them ** as the
gypsies do stolen children to make 'em pass for
their own." (This figure, by the way, was an
orphan of Churchill's when Sheridan came along
and adopted it.) Thus, we find it hard to forgive
Herrick for one of his thefts from Suckling, when
he took the loveliest lines of the lovely ' Ballad
upon a Wedding' :

Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice, stole in and out,
As if they feared the light,

and in his * Hesperides ' he spoilt them to

Her pretty feet, like snails, did creep a little out.

Nothing is further from my desire than that I
should be taken either as a defender of plagiarism
or as a denier of its existence. It exists, and it is

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM,

an ugly crime. What I am seeking to show is
that it is not as frequent as many may imagine,
and more especially that much which is called
plagiarism is not criminal at all, but perfectly
legitimate. For instance, Mr. Charles Reade's in-
corporation of fragments of the ' Dialogues ' of
Erasmus in the 'Cloister and the Hearth,' and of
Swift's * Polite Conversation ' in the * Wandering
Heir,' was a proper and even a praiseworthy use
of preexisting material. But Mr. Reade did not
always remain within his rights, and it is im-
possible to doubt that his ' Portrait ' was first
hung in the private gallery of Mme. Reybaud,
and that some of his * Hard Cash ' was filched
from the coffers of the 'Pauvres de Paris' of
MM. Brisebarre and Nus. Mme. Reybaud's pic-
ture was not a Duchess of Devonshire which a
man might so fall in love with that he could
not help stealing it — indeed, it is not easy to
discover why Mr. Reade wanted it; but the
drama of MM. Brisebarre and Nus is ingeniously
pathetic, and although no one has made as skil-
ful use of its fable as Mr. Reade, it has served
to suggest also Miss Braddon's 'Rupert God-
win, Banker,' Mr. Sterling Coyne's * Fraud and
its Victims,* and Mr. Dion Boucicault's ' Streets of
New-York.'

40 PEN AND INK,

It is in the theatre that we hear the most accusa-
tions of plagiarism. . Apparently there is an un-
willingness on the part of the public to believe
that a play can be original, and a dramatist
nowadays is forced not only to affirm his in-
nocence, but almost to prove it. I am inclined
to think that the habit of adapting from the
French — a habit now happily in its decline — is
responsible for this state of things, for the laxity
of morals on the part of the author, and for the
general and ungenerous suspicion on the side of
the public.

It is the playwright's fault, one must confess, if
the playgoer is doubtful as to the paternity of every
new play. So many pieces were brought out as
"new and original," which were neither original
nor new, that the playgoer was confirmed in his
suspicions ; and he finds it hard to surrender the
habit of doubt even now when a French drama in
an English or American theatre generally bears the
French author's name, and when the best work of
the best English and American dramatists is really
their own. Mr. Herman Merivale and Mr. Bronson
Howard, Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Pinero, and other of
the little band of young play makers whose work
seems to promise a possible revival of the English
drama as a form of art and a department of litera-

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.

ture, are quite above the meanness of taking a
foreign author's plot without authority or acknowl-
edgment. Yet they suffer for the sins of their
predecessors.

Credit, said a great economist, is suspicion
asleep ; and the saying is as true in the playmaking
profession as it is in the trade of moneymaking.
Suspicion is suffering from an acute attack of in-
somnia just now, and many dramatic critics are
quick to declare a resemblance between Macedon
and Monmouth, if there be salmons in both, and
when the dramatist is shown to have lifted a tiny
lamb they are ready to hang him for a stalwart
sheep. Now, there is no department of literature
in which similarities are as inevitable as they are in
the drama. I have tried to show already that the
elements of the drama are comparatively few, and
that the possible combinations are not many.
There are only a few themes suited for treatment
in the theatre, and many a topic which a novelist
can handle to advantage the dramatist is debarred
from attempting by the conditions of the stage. A
certain likeness there must needs be between the
new plays and the old plays in which the same
subject has been discussed by the dramatist. And
these coincidences may be as innocent as they are
** curious."

PEN AND INK.

I remember that when Mr. Dion Boucicault origi-
nally produced the 'Shaughraun ' — it was at.Wal-
lack's Theatre in New- York ten or twelve years
ago — there was an attempt to prove that he had
taken his plot from an earlier Irish drama by Mr.
Wybert Reeve. At first sight the similarity between
the two plays was really striking, and parallel col-
umns were erected with ease. But a closer investi-
gation revealed that all that was common to these
two plays was common to fifty other Irish plays,
and that all that gave value to the * Shaughraun ' —
the humor, the humanity, the touches of pathos,
the quick sense of character — was absent from the
other play. There is a formula for the mixing of
an Irish drama, and Mr. Reeve and Mr. Boucicault
had each prepared his piece according to this
formula, making due admixture of the Maiden-in-
Distress, the Patriot-in-danger-of-his-Life, and the
Cowardly Informer, who have furnished forth
many score plays since first the Red-Coats were
seen in the Green Isle. Both dramatists had drawn
from the common stock of types and incidents,
and there was really no reason to believe that Mr.
Boucicault was indebted to Mr. Reeve for anything,
because Mr. Reeve had little in his play which had
not been in twenty plays before, and which Mr.
Boucicault could not have put together out of his

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM. 43

recollections of these without any knowledge of
that. Of course there is a great difference between
the original and the commonplace, but if a man
cannot be the former it is no sin to be the latter.
Commonplace is not plagiarism. That a coat is
threadbare is no proof that it has been stolen — on
the contrary.

To any one understanding the subtlety of mental
processes, and especially the movements of the
imagination, a similarity of situation is often not
only not a proof of plagiarism, but a proof that
there has been no plagiarism. This sounds like a
paradox, but I think I can make my meaning clear
and evident. When we find the same strikingly
original idea differently handled by two authors,
we may absolve the later from any charge of
literary theft if we find that his treatment of the
novel situation differs from his predecessor's. If
the treatment is different, we may assume that the
second writer was not aware of the existence of
the first writer's work. And for this reason : if
the later author were acquainted with the startlingly
novel effect of the earlier author, he could not have
treated the same subject without repeating certain
of the minor peculiarities also. He must perforce
have taken over with the theme in some measure
the treatment also. All literary workmen know

44 PEN AND INK.

how difficult it is to disentangle the minor details
from the main idea, and to strip the idea naked,
discarding the mere detail. Had the second writer
known of the first writer's work, he could not help
being influenced by it. Thus it is that a similarity
of subject may be evidence of originality. There
is a short story by Fitzjames O'Brien, called 'What
Was It? ' in which there is a palpable but invisible
being. Since this was first published there have
been two other short stories on the same idea, one
published in the Atlantic Monthly by Mr. Charles
de Kay, and the other published anonymously in
the Cornbill Magazine. The tale in the CornbiU
coincides in detail as well as in idea, and it is
almost impossible to declare its anonymous author
guiltless of plagiarism. But Mr. de Kay's story
was wholly diffierent in its elaboration, and the two
tales, although the chief figure in each was a being
palpable but invisible, were as unlike as possible.
Here there was obviously no plagiarism. The
coat — to take up the figure of the last para-
graph — was made of the same cloth, but its cut
was not the same.

(Lately — since this paper first appeared — the
central figure of Fitzjames O'Brien's story has
been seen again in 'Le Horla' of M. Guy de Mau-
passant, but with a treatment so personal and a

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.

modification so striking that it seems impossible
that the French author has not happened on it in-
dependently, — however easy it might be to pre-
pare parallel columns to prove him a plagiarist.)

Three or four years ago the Saturday Review
laid down the law of plagiarism in three clauses :

1. ** In the first place, we would permit any great
modern artist to recut and to set anew the literary
gems of classic times and of the Middle Ages."

2. "Our second rule would be that all authors
have an equal right to the stock situations which
are the common store of humanity." 3. *' Finally,
we presume that an author has a right to borrow
or buy an idea-, if he frankly acknowledges the
transaction." In commenting on this code, I sug-
gested that there might be a difficulty of interpre-
tation in the first clause, for who is to declare any
modern a great artist? In the second clause the
law is clearly stated, and whether any given situa-
tion is or is not common property is a question of
fact for the jury. The only difficulty in applying
the third clause is in defining precisely the degree
of frankness and fulness required in acknowledg-
ing the indebtedness. But hypercriticism is out
of place in considering a suggestion as valuable, as
needful just now, and as neatly put up as this
triple law of the contributor to the Saturday

46 PEN AND INK.

Review. A general acceptance of this code would
tend to clear the air of the vague charges of pla-
giarism which hang in heavy clouds over the liter-
ary journals. Before we can decide whether an
author is guilty of the offence, we must be agreed
on what constitutes the crime, what are its ele-
ments, and what are the exemptions. I have
ventured to draw up the statute of exemptions in
a form slightly different from that given in the
Saturday Review, a little broader and stronger,
and perhaps a little simpler : A writer is at liberty
to use the work of his predecessors as he will,
provided always that ( i ) he does not take credit
(even by implication) for what he has not invented,
and (2) that he does not in any way infringe on
the pecuniary rights of the original owner.

When M. Sardou brought out the farcical com-
edy 'Les Pommes du Voisin,' he was accused
of having stolen if from a tale of Charles de Ber-
nard, and he retorted instantly with evidence that
he had the permission of the holders of the Ber-
nard copyrights, who were to share in the profits
of the play. Here M. Sardou was innocent under
the second clause of my law, but guilty under the
first, insomuch as he had concealed his indebted-
ness to Charles de Bernard and had taken credit
for an invention which was not his own. When

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.

Mr. Charles Reade turned Mrs. Burnett's *That
Lass o' Lowrie's' into a play called 'Joan,' without
asking the permission of the American author, he
was guilty under the second clause and innocent
under the first, for there was no concealment of
the source of the drama.

With a proper understanding of what is and
what is hot plagiarism, there should go a greater
circumspection in bringing the accusation. Plagiarr
ism is the worst of literary crimes. It is theft,
neither more nor less. All who desire to uphold
the honor of literature, and to see petty larceny
and highway robbery meet with their just punish-
ment, are concerned that the charge shall not be
idly brought or carelessly answered. But now so
often has the amateur literary detective cried
**Wolf" that patience is exhausted, and accusa-
tions of literary theft have been flung broadcast,
until they may be met with a smile of contempt.
This is not as it should be. It is contrary to public
policy that the literary conscience should become
callous. The charge of plagiarism is very serious,
and it should not be lightly brought or lightly
borne. The accusation is very easy to make and
very hard to meet; it should be a boomerang,
which, when skilfully thrown, brings down the
quarry with a single deadly blow, but which,

48 PEN AND INK.

when carelessly cast, rebounds swiftly and breaks
the head of him who threw it. The man who
makes the charge of plagiarism should be ready
to stand to his guns, and to pay the penalty of
having opened fire. And the penalty for having
failed to prove the accusation should be heavy.
The accuser should be put under bonds, so to
speak, to make his charge good, and if he loses his
case he should be cast in damages. It is not right
to force an author either unjustly to lie under an
accusation of theft, or to undergo the annoyance
and expense of refuting vague allegations, urged
in wanton carelessness by some irresponsible per-
son. Nothing is more disagreeable or thankless
than a dispute with an inferior. Years ago Dr.
Holmes declared the hydrostatic paradox of con-
troversy: "Controversy equalizes fools and wise
men in the same way — and the fools know it! "

If we were to hold to a strict accountability the
feeble-minded persons who delight in pointing out
alleged coincidences and similarities, if we were to
discourage the accusation of plagiarism, except on
abundant evidence, if we were to declare that
any man who fails to sustain his charge shall be
discredited, we should do much to put down
plagiarism itself. When the difficulties and the
dangers of making the accusation are increased —

THE ETHICS OF PLAGIARISM.

and it is now neither difficult nor dangerous — the
number of accusations will be decreased at once,
and in time the public conscience will be quickened.
Then it would be possible to get serious attention
for the serious case of literary theft, and then the
writer who might be found with stolen wares con-
cealed about his person would be visited with
swifter condemnation and with more certain pun-
ishment. But now all we can do is to remember
that

The man who plants cabbages imitates too.

THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE —

A Confidential Communtcation to all Makers 0/ Books.

PPARENTLY the tfue theory of the Pref-
ace is apprehended by very few of
those who are, by trade, makers of
books — to use Carlyle's characteri-
zation of his own calling. Mr. Mat-
thew Arnold, indeed, master of all literary arts,
was highly skilful in the use of the Preface, which,
in his hands, served to drive home the bolt of his
argument, and to rivet it firmly on the other side.
Those who have read one of Mr. Arnold's prefaces
know what to expect, and fall to, with increased
appetite, on the book itself. But not many men
may wield the weapons of Mr. Arnold, and very
few, as I have hinted already, are skilled in the use
of the Preface. Many, ignorant of its utility,
choose to ignore it altogether. More, accepting it
as a necessary evil, acquit themselves of it in the
most perfunctory fashion. There is slight sur-
vival of the tradition which made the appeal to

THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE.

the Gentle Reader a fit and proper custom. But
nowadays the appeal is useless, and the Gentle
Reader — oh, where is he? In the days when
there was a Gentle Reader there was no giant
critic to appal the trembling author with his
thunderous Fee-Fo-Fum. In the beginning, when
printing was a new invention, it served for the
multiplication of books alone ; newspapers lagged
long after ; and it is only in the present century
that the reading public began to allow that middle-
man, the critic, to taste and try before they buy.
The Preface in forma pauperis ^ in which the author
confessed his sinful publication and implored for-
giveness, urging as his sole excuse ''hunger and
request of friends," is now as much out of date
and as antiquated in style as the fulsome dedica-
tion to a noble patron. The two lived together
and died together about the time when the work-
ing man of letters moved out of his lodgings in
Grub Street.

The Preface in which the writer takes a humor-
ous view of his own work is a late device ; it is
capable of good results in the hands of a literary
artist like Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, who sug-
gests in the pages which prepare us to enjoy his
record of * An Inland Voyage ' that in his Preface
an author should stand afar off and look at his

52 PEN AND INK.

book affectionately, if he will, but dispassionately.
**lt is best, in such circumstances," he asserts,
''to represent a delicate shade of manner be-
tween humility and superiority, as if the book
had been written by some one else, and you had
merely run over it and inserted what was good."
Clever as this is, and characteristic and delightful
as its humor is, 1 feel constrained to assert my be-
lief that Mr. Stevenson is not standing on the solid
ground of a sound theory. Mr. Stevenson is a
writer of exceptional gifts, and he may venture on
liberties which would be fatal to the rest of us :
his example affords no safe rule for ordinary mor-
tals. In the Preface a man must take himself seri-
ously, for a Preface is a very serious thing. It
cannot be denied that the humorous attitude is
much wiser than the self-depreciatory and the apol-
ogetic, which are, unfortunately, far more com-
mon. A humorist has, at least, a wholesome belief
in himself, and he can hide his doubting sorrow
with a smile ; whereas the plaintive author, who
confesses his weakness with tears in his eyes, is a
sorry spectacle that no critic need respect.

The cause of the apologetic Preface is obvious
enough. Although printed at the beginning of
the book, the Preface is the final thing written.
When the long labor of composition is over at

THE TRUE THEORY OF TH^KH^AjCE, n)^^^^^

last, and the intense strain is relaxed suddenly,
then it is that the author sits down to his Preface.
There is a cooling of the enthusiasm which has
carried him through his work ; there is often,
indeed, a violent reaction ; and it is at this mo-
ment of depression and despondency, when the
writer is a prey to dread doubt about his book and
about himself, that the Preface has to be composed.
Just then the author sometimes wonders whether
it is not his duty to throw what he has written in-
to the fire, and $o rid the world of a misconceived
and misshapen abortion. Rarely is this feeling,
acute as it is, and painful, quite strong enough to
make the author actually cast his MS. into the
grate — never until, like Pendennis, he has made
sure that the fire is out. But his morbidity of spirit
and his self-distrust find vent in the Preface. Not
unfrequently is the Preface worded like a last
dying speech and confession. As M. Octave Uz-
anne says in the lively Preface to his lively little
book called the 'Caprices d'un Bibliophile,' "the
Preface is the salutation to the reader, and too
often, alas ! the terrible salutation of the gladiators
to Caesar — {Morituri te salutantt "

This is rank heresy : and all such heretics should
be burnt at the stake, or at least they should have
their books burnt in the market-place by the com-

PEN AND INK.

mon hangman. The Preface is not the fit time
and occasion for the author to exhale his plaints,
to make confession of his sins, and to promise to
do penance. It is perhaps not too much to say that
the Preface is the most important part of a book,
except the Index. Anybody can write a book,
such as it is, but only a gifted man, or a man
trained in the art, can write a Preface, such as it
ought to be.

In the Preface the author must put his best foot
foremost, and this is often the premier pas qui
coute. A Preface should be appetizing, alluring,
enticing. As a battle well joined is half-won, as a
work well begun is half-done, so a book with a
good Preface is half-way on the high-road to suc-
cess. In the Preface the author offers his first-
fruits and pours his libation. In the Preface the
author sets a sample of his text as in a show-
window. In the Preface the author strikes the
key-note of his work. Therefore must the good
Preface set forth the supreme excellence of the
book it should precede, as a brass-band goes
before a regiment. As delicately, and yet as un-
hesitatingly, as the composer knows how, the
Preface should sound triumphant paeans of exult-
ant self-praise. There is no need that a Preface
should be long ; it takes a large cart to carry a

THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE.

score of empty casks, almost worthless, while a
ten-thousand-dollar diamond may go snugly in a
waistcoat-pocket. But a Preface must be strong
enough to do its allotted work. Now, its allotted
work — and here we are laying bare the secret of
the true theory of the Preface — is to furnish to the
unwitting critic a syllabus or a skeleton of the
criticism which you wish to have him write.

The thoughtless may declare that ** nobody
reads a Preface"; but there could be no more
fatal blunder. Perhaps that impalpable entity, the
general reader, may skip it not infrequently ; but
that tangible terror, the critic, never fails to read
the Preface, even when he reads no farther. Now
and again the general reader may dispense with
the reading of the Preface, as legislative assemblies
dispense with the reading of the minutes of the
last meeting, that they may the sooner get to the
business in hand. The critic is a very different
sort of person from the general reader, and it is
meat and drink to him to read a Preface. The
author should recognize this fact ; he should ac-
cept the altered conditions of the Preface. Con-
sider for a moment what the Preface was, what it
is now, and what it should be. It was addressed
to the reader, who read it rarely. It is now, as
we have seen above, anything or nothing, some-

36 PEN AND INK.

times absent, often artless, seldom apt. It should
be a private letter from the author to the critic
indicating the lines upon which he (the author)
would like him (the critic) to frame an opinion and
to declare a judgment. A good Preface is like
the trick modern magicians use, when, under pre-
tence of giving us free choice, they force us to
draw the card they have already determined upon.
So if a book have a proper Preface, contrived with
due art, the critic cannot choose but write about it
as the author wishes. A master of the craft will
blow his own horn in the Preface of his book so
skilfully and so unobtrusively that only a faint
echo shall linger in the ear of the critic, iterating
and reiterating the Leit-Motiv of self-praise until
the charmed reviewer repeats it unconsciously.

Of course it is not easy for a gentleman to praise
himself publicly as he feels he deserves to be
praised. The pleasantest and most profitable
Preface for the beginner in book-making is the in-
troduction by one of the acknowledged leaders of
literature. Then, by a strange reversal of custom,
it is the celebrity who waits at the door like an
usher to declare the titles of the young man who
is about to cross the threshold for the first time.
Thus the young author has granted to him a pass-
port by which he may gain admittance where else

THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE.

he might not enter. Jules Janin was a master-
hand at the issuing of these introductory letters of
credit ; he was easy and good-natured, and rarely
or never did he refuse a novice the alms of a Pref-
ace. Janin had the ear of the public, and he liked
to lead the public by the ear. Perhaps, too, he
liked the opportunity of using his high praise of
the new-comer slyly to deal a blow between the
ribs or under the belt of some old favorite whose
reputation came between him and the sun. He
who makes the Preface to another's book stands
on a vantage-ground and is free from responsi-
bility ; he may classify under heads the things that
he hates, and then, in accordance with the precept
and the practice of Donnybrook, hit a head where-
ever he sees it. Truly a man may wish, " O that
mine enemy would let me write his Preface!
Could I not damn with faint praise and stab with
sharp insinuendo? " — to use the labor-saving and
much-needed word thoughtlessly invented by the
sable legislator of South drolina.

The Preface by another hand is often a pleasant
device for the display of international courtesy.
Merimee introduced Turgenef to the Parisians. Iny
the United States an English author may be pre-
sented to the public by an American celebrity, and
in Great Britain an American book may be pub-

58 PEN AND INK.

lished with a voucher of its orthodoxy signed by a
dignitary of the Church. The exalted friend of the
author who provides the introduction, if he be but
a true friend, may praise far more highly tlian even
the wiliest author would dare to praise himself.
If he understands the obligation of his position and
does his duty, he should blare the trumpet boldly
and bang the big-drum mightily, and bid the
whole world walk up and see the show which is
just about to begin. Even if the public be dull
and laggard and refuse to be charmed, the author
has at least the signal satisfaction for once in his
life of hearing his effort properly appreciated at its
exact value. If by any chance he is a truly modest
man — a rare bird indeed, a white black-bird — he
may have some slight qualms of conscience on
seeing himself over-praised in the pages of his own
book. But these qualms are subdued easily
enough for the most part. *M never saw an
author in my life — saving perhaps one," says the
Autocrat, " that did not purr as audibly as a full-
grown domestic cat on having his fur smoothed
the right way by a skilful hand."

In default of a friend speaking as one having
authority, the author must perforce write his own
Preface and declare his own surpassing virtues.
The old-fashioned Preface, inscribed to the Gentle

THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE.

Reader of the vague and doubtful past, often failed
to reach its address. The Preface of the new
school, constructed according to the true theory,
is intended solely for the critic. Now, the critic is
the very reverse of the Gentle Reader, and he
must be addressed accordingly. He studies the
Preface carefully to see what bits he can chip away
to help build his own review. '* A good Preface
is as essential to put the reader into good humor
as a good prologue to a play," so the author of the
* Curiosities of Literature ' tells us ; but nowadays
our plays have no prologues, and it is the critic
whom the Preface must put into good humor.
Now, the critic is not the ogre he is often repre-
sented ; . he is a man like ourselves, a man having
to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, a man
often over-worked and often bound down to adis-
tastefultask. He is quick to takea hint. Forhisbene-
fit the Preface should fairly bristle with hints. The
Preface should insinuate adroitly that the book it pre-
cedes is — in the choice phrase of the advertise-
ment — " a felt-want filled." This need not be done
brutally and nakedly. On the contrary, it is bet-
ter to lead the mind of the critic by easy steps.
Dwell on the importance of the subject, and de-
clare that in the present work it has been regarded
for the first time from a new and particular point

6o PEN AND INK.

of view. Point out, modestly but firmly, the
special advantages which the author has enjoyed,
and which make him an authority on tbe subject.
Casually let drop, in quotation marks, a few words
of high praise once addressed to the author by a
great man, now no longer with us, and trust that
you have done all in your power to merit such
gratifying encomiums. You may even venture to
intimate that although you cannot expect the pro-
fane vulgar to see the transcendent merit of your
work, yet the favored few of keener insight will
recognize it at once : flattery is a legal-tender with-
out Act of Congress, and the critic accepts it as
readily, perhaps, as the author. The critic is only
a fellow human being after all, and like the rest of
our fellow human beings he is quite ready to take
us at our own valuation. Hold the head up j look
the world in the eye ; and he is a churlish critic
who does not at least treat you with respect.

But if the Preface is weak in tone, if it is nerve-
less, if it is apologetic, then the critic takes the
author at his word and has a poor opinion of him,
and expresses that opinion in plain language. If
you throw yourself on the mercy of the court, the
critic gives you at once the full penalty of the
law. Confess a lamb and the critic hangs you
for a sheep. Give him but five lines of Preface

THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE. 6 1

and he can damn any book. Acknowledge any
obligation, however slight, and the critic pounces
upon it ; and your character for originality is lost.
Every admission will be used against you. He be-
lieves that you undervalue your indebtedness to
others ; and if you rashly call his attention to it, he
tries to balance the account by overstating your
debt. I know an author who had studied a sub-
ject for years, contributing from time to time to
periodicals an occasional paper on certain of its
sub-divisions, until at last he was ready to write
his book about it ; his honesty moved him to say
in the Preface of the volume that he had made use
of articles in certain magazines and reviews. He
did not specifically declare that these articles were
his own work, and so one critic called the book *'a
compilation from recent periodical literature," leav-
ing the reader to infer that the author had been
caught decking himself out in borrowed plumes.
Two friends of the same author kindly consented
to read the proof-sheets of another of his books ;
and in the Preface thereof he thanked them by
name for * ' the invaluable aid they have kindly
given me in the preparation of these pages for the
press. " One critic took advantage of this acknowl-
edgment to credit the two friends with a material
share in the work of which they had only read the

62 PEN AND INK.

proof. The author of that remarkable book, the
' Story of a Country Town,' wrote a most pathetic
Preface, a cry of doubt wrung from his heart ; and
there was scarcely a single favorable review of
the volume the praise of which had not been
dampened by the Preface.

The only safe rule is resolutely to set forth the
merits of the book in the Preface, and to be silent
as to its faults. Do not apologize for anything.
Confess nothing. If there are omissions, pride
yourself on them. If the book has an inevitable
defect, boast of it. A man has the qualities of his
faults, says the French maxim ; in a Preface, a man
must defiantly set up his faults as qualities. Of
course this needs to be done with the greatest
skill ; and it is seen in perfection only in the Pref-
aces of those who have both taste and tact, and
who combine a masculine vigor of handling with
a feminine delicacy of touch. Anybody can write
a book, — as I have said already, — but only a man
singularly gifted by nature and richly cultivated by
art can write a Preface as it ought to be written.

If common decency requires absolutely that the
author confess something, an indebtedness to a
predecessor, or the like, even then this confession
must not encumber and disfigure the Preface.
Dismiss the thought of the confession wholly from

THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE. 63

your mind while you are composing the Preface.
Then declare your indebtedness and avow any of
the seven deadly sins of which you may have been
guilty — in a note, in a modest and unobtrusive
little note, either at the end of the book or at the
bottom of the page. The critic always reads the
Preface, but only a man really interested in the
subject ever digs into a note. A foot-note, lurking
shyly in fine type, is perhaps the best place for a
man to confess his sins in. And yet there is a
great advantage in postponing the bad quarter of
an hour as long as possible — that is to say, to the
very end of the book. When the aspiring drama-
tist brought his tragedy to Sheridan as the mana-
ger of Drury Lane, he said that he had written the
prologue himself and he had ventured to hope that
perhaps Mr. Sheridan would favor him with an
epilogue. ''An epilogue, my dear sir," cried
Sheridan ; *' it will never come to that ! "

In talking over the true theory of the Preface
with friends engaged in other trades than that of
letters, I have found that the same principle ob-
tains elsewhere, A learned professor told me that
he never declared the limitations of his course in
his first lecture ; he preferred to begin by getting
the attention of the students ; when he had once
acquired this, why, then he found occasion casu-

64 PEN AND INK.

ally in the second or third, or even the fourth
lecture, to let his hearers know, as if by accident,
just what bounds he proposed to set to his dis-
course. The case of the dramatist is even harder,
for an acknowledgment of any kind printed in the
playbill, before the curtain rises on the first act for
the first time, is more dangerous than the most
apologetic Preface. Dramatists have always
availed themselves of the royal privilege of prig-
ging — or, if this sound unseemly, let us say, of
taking their goods wherever they found them. So
many playwrights have presented as new and
original plays which were neither new nor original,
that critics are wary and suspicious. They are
inclined to believe the worst of their fellow-man
when he has written a play : after all, as M. Thiers
said, it is so easy not to write a tragedy in five
acts. But if a man has written a tragedy in five
acts or a comedy in three, if a man is an honest
man, and if he is under some trifling obligations
to some forgotten predecessor, what is he to do ?
The critics are sure to suppose that the author has
understated his indebtedness. If he say he took a
hint for a scene or a character from Schiller or Sir
Walter Scott or Alexandre Dumas, the critics are
likely to record that the play is derived from
Schiller, or Scott, or Dumas. If he say his plot

THE TRUE THEORY OF THE PREFACE. 65

was suggested by a part of an old play, they are
likely to set it down as founded on the old play.
If he confess that his piece is remotely based on
another in a foreign tongue, they call it an adapta-
tion. And if he, in the excess of his honesty, pre-
sents his play humbly as an adaptation, they go a
step farther and accept it as a translation, and are
even capable of finding fault with it because it
does not exactly reproduce the original. If Mr.
Pinero, when in his charming comedy, the
' Squire,' he sought to bring the scent of the hay
across the footlights, had made an allusion to Mr.
Hardy's story, not a few dramatic critics would
have called the play an adaptation of the story —
which it was not. It is impossible for the drama-
tist to frame an acknowledgment which shall
declare with mathematical precision his indebted-
ness to any given predecessor for a bit of color,
for a vague suggestion of character, for a stray hint
of a situation, or for a small but pregnant knot of
man and motive. It cannot be set down in plain
figures. Unfortunately for him who writes for
the stage, the playbill which everybody reads
is the only Preface ; and there are no foot-notes
possible. The dramatist has to confess his obliga-
tion at the very worst moment, or else forever
after hold his peace.

66 PEN AND INK.

''A Preface, being the entrance to a book,
should invite by its beauty. An elegant porch an-
nounces the splendor of the interior," said the
elder Disraeli, setting forth the theory of the Pref-
ace as it was in the past. But this is not the new
and true theory of the Preface, which should be
written in letters of gold in the study of every
maker of books : — *Mf you want to have your
book criticized favorably, give yourself a good
notice in the Preface ! " This is the true theory,
in the very words of its discoverer. If it is not ab-
solutely sound and water-tight, it is, at all events,
an admirable working hypothesis. Although others
had had faint glimmerings of the truth, it was left
for a friend of mine to formulate it finally and as I
have given it here. To him are due the thanks of
all makers of books — and he is a publisher.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY.

F it chance that artists fall to talking
about their art, it is the critic's place
to listen, that he may pick up a
little knowledge, j Of late, certain of
the novelists of Great Britain and the
United States have been discussing the principles
and the practice of the art of writing stories. Mr.
Howells declapftd his warm appreciation of Mr.
Henry James's novels ; Mr. Stevenson made public
a delightful plea for Romance ; Mr. Besant lectured
gracefully on the Art of Fiction ; and Mr. James
modestly presented his views by way of supple-
ment and criticism. The discussion took a wide
range. With more or less fulness it covered the
proper aim and intent of the novelist, his material
and his methods, his success, his rewards, social
and pecuniary, and the morality of his work and
of his art. But, with all its extension, the discus-
sion did not include one important branch of the
art of fiction : it did not consider at all the minor
art of the Short-story. Although neither Mr.

68 PEN AND INK.

Howells nor Mr. James, Mr. Besant nor Mr. Ste-
venson specifically limited his remarks to those
longer, and, in the picture dealer's sense of the
word, more " important/' tales known as Novels,
and, although, of course, their general criticisms
of the abstract principles of the art of fiction ap-
plied quite as well to the Short-story as to the
Novel, yet all their concrete examples were full-
length Novels, and the Short-story, as such,
received no recognition at all.

The difference between a Novel and a Novelette
is one of length only : a Novelette is a brief Novel.
But the difference between a Novel and a Short-
story is a difference of kind. A true Short-story is
something other and something more than a mere
story which is short. A true Short-story differs
from the Novel chiefly in its essential unity of im-
pression. In a far more exact and precise use of
the word, a Short-story has unity as a Novel can-
not have it. Often, it may be noted by the way,
the Short-story fulfils the three false unities of the
French classic drama : it shows one action in one
place on one day. A Short-story deals with a sin-
gle character, a single event, a single emotion, or
the series of emotions called forth by a single situ-
ation. Poe's paradox that a poem cannot greatly
exceed a hundred lines in length undiet4)enalty of

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 69

ceasing to be one poem and breaking into a string
of poems, may serve to suggest the precise differ-
ence between the Short-story and the Novel. The
Short-story is the single effect, complete and self-
contained, while the Novel is of necessity broken
into a series of episodes. Thus the Short-story
has, what the Novel cannot have, the effect of
'* totality," as Poe called it, the unity of impres-
sion. The Short-story is not only not a chapter
out of a Novel, or an incident or an episode ex-
tracted froni a longer tale, but at its best it im-
presses the reader with the belief that it would be
spoiled if it were made larger or if it were incor-
porated into a more elaborate work. The differ-
ence in spirit and in form between the Lyric and
the Epic is scarcely greater than the difference
between the Short-story and the Novel ; and the
' Raven ' and ' How we brought the good news
from Ghent to Aix ' are not more unlike the ' Lady
of the Lake ' and * Paradise Lost,' in form and in
spirit, than the ' Luck of Roaring Camp ' and the
*Man without a Country,^ two typical Short-
stories, are unlike ' Vanity Fair ' and the ' Heart
of Midlothian,' two typical Novels.

Another great difference between the Short-
story and the Novel lies in the fact that the Novel,
nowadays at least, must be a love-tale, while the

PEN AND INK.

Short-Story need not deal with love at all. Al-
though ' Vanity Fair ' was a Novel without a Hero,
nearly every other Novel has a hero and a heroine,
and the novelist, however unwillingly, must con-
cern himself in their love-affairs. But the writer
of Short-stories is under no bonds of this sort. Of
course he may tell a tale of love if he choose, and if
love enters into his tale naturally and to its enrich-
ing ; but he need not bother with love at all unless
he please. Some of the best of Short-stories are
love-stories too, — Mr. Aldrich's 'Margery Daw'
for instance, Mr. Stimson's 'Mrs. KnoUys,' Mr.
Bunner's ' Love in Old Qoathes ' ; but more of
them are not love-stories at all. If we were to
pick out the ten best Short-stories, 1 think we
should find that fewer than half of them made any
mention at all of love. In the ' Snow Image ' and
in the * Ambitious Guest,' in the ' Gold Bug ' and
in the ' Fall of the House of Usher,' in ' My Double,
and how he Undid me,' in * Devil-Puzzlers,' in the
' Outcasts of Poker Flat,' in ' Jean-ah Poquelin,' in
' A Bundle of Letters,' there is little or no'mention
of the love of man for woman, which is the chief
topic of conversation in a Novel. While the
Novel cannot get on without love, the Short-story
can. Since love is almost the only thing which
will give interest to a long story, the writer^qf

9 ' S

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 71

Novels has to get love into his tales as best he
may, even when the subject rebels and when he
himself is too old to take any interest in the
mating of John and Joan. But the Short-story,
being brief, does not need a love-interest to hold
its parts together, and the writer of Short-stories
has thus a greater freedom: he may do as he
pleases ; from him a love-tale is not expected. ♦
But other things are required of a writer of
Short-stories which are not required of a writer of
* Novels. The novelist may take his time : he has

abundant room to turn about. The writer of
Short-stories must be concise, and compression,
' • a vigorous compression, is essential. For him,

more than for any one else, the half is more than
the whole. Again, the novelist may be common-
place, he may bend his best energies to the photo-
graphic reproduction of the actual ; if he show us
a cross section of real life we are content ; but the
writer of Short-stories must have originality and
ingenuity. If to compression, originality, and in-
genuity he add also a touch of fantasy, so much
the better. It may be said that no one has ever
succeeded as a writer of Short-stories who had
not ingenuity, originality, and compression, and
that most of those who have succeeded in this
line had also the touch of fantasy. But there are

PEN AND INK.

not a few successful novelists lacking not only in
fantasy and compression, but also in ingenuity
and originality: they had other qualities, no
doubt, but these they had not. If an example
must be given, the name of Anthony TroUope will
occur to all. Fantasy was a thing he abhorred ;
compression he knew not ; and originality and in-
genuity can be conceded to him only by a strong
stretch of the ordinary meaning of the words.
Other qualities he had in plenty, but not these.
And, not having them, he was not a writer of
Short-stories. Judging from his essay on Haw-
thorne, one may even go so far as to say that
Trollope did not know a good Short-story when
he saw it.

I have written Short-story with a capital S and
a hyphen because I wished to emphasize the dis-
tinction between the Short^story and the story
which is merely short. The Short-story is a high
and difficult department of fiction* The story
which is short can be written by anybody who
can write at all ; and it may be good, bad, or in-
different ; but at its best it is wholly unlike the
Short-story. In ' An Editor's Tales ' Trollope has
given us excellent specimens of the story which is
short ; and the stories which make up this book
are amusing enough and clever enough, but they

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY.

are wanting in the individuality and in the com-
pleteness of the genuine Short-story. Like the
brief tales to be seen in the English monthly mag-
azines and in the Sunday editions of American
newspapers into which they are copied, they are,
for the most part, either merely amplified anec-
dotes or else incidents which might have been
used in a Novel just as well as not. Now, the
genuine Short^story abhors the idea of the Novel.
It can be conceited neither as part of a Novel nor
as elaborated and expanded so.as to form a Novel.
A good Short-story is no more the synopsis of a
Novel than it is an episode from a Novel. A slight
Novel, or a Novel cut down, is a Novelette : it is
not a Short-story. Mr. Howells's ' Their Wed-
ding Journey ' and Miss Howard's ' One Sum-
mer' are Novelettes, — little Novels. Mr. Anstey's
' Vice Versa,' Mr. Besant's ' Case of Mr. Lucrafl/
Hugh Conway's * Called Back,' Mr. Julian Haw-
thorne's 'Archibald Malmaison,' and Mr. Steven-
son's * Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'
are Short-stories in conception, although they are
without the compression which the Short-story
requires. In the acute and learned essay on vers
de societe which Mr. Frederick Locker prefixed to
.his admirable 'Lyra Elegantiarum,' he declared
that the two characteristics of the beSt vers de

PEN AND INK.

socUte were brevity and brilliancy, aiid that the
'Rape of the Lock' would be the type and model
of the best vers de societe — if it were not just a
little too long. So it is with the ' Case of Mr.
Lucraft,' with ' Vice Versa/ with 'Archibald Mal-
maison ' : they are just a little too long.

It is to be noted as a curious coincidence that
there is no exact word in English to designate
either vers de societe or the Short-story, and yet in
no language a>e there better vers de societe or
Short-stories than in English. It may be'je-
marked also that there is a certain likeness be-
tween vers de societe and Short-stories : for one
thing, both seem easy to write and are hard.
And the typical qualifications of each may apply
with almost equal force to the other: vers de
societe should reveal compression, ingenuity, and
originality, and Short-stories should have brevity
and brilliancy. In no class of writing are neatness
of construction and polish of execution more
needed than in the writing of vers de societe and
of Short-stories. The writer of Short-stories
must have the sense of form, which Mr. Lathrop t
has called "the highest and last attribute of a ^
creative writer." The construction must be logi-
cal, adequate, harmonious. Here is the weak '
spot in Mr. Bishop's ' One of the Thirty Pieces,' ^

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE. SHORT-STORY.

the fundamental idea of which has extraordinary
strength perhaps not fully developed in the story.
But other of Mr. Bishop's stories — the * Battle of
Bunkerloo,' for instance — are admirable in all
ways, conception and execution having an even
excellence. Again, Hugh Conway's 'Daughter
of the Stars ' is a Short-story which fails from
sheer deficiency of style : here is one of the very
finest Short-story ideas ever given to mortal man,
but the handling is at best barely sufficient. To
do justice to the conception would t^sjc the execu-
tion of a poet. We can merely wonder what the
tale would have been had it occurred to Haw-
thorne, to Poe, or to Theophile Gautier. An idea
logically developed by one possessing the sense of
form and the gift of style is what we look for in
the Short-story.

But, although the sense of form and the gift of
style are essential to the writing of a good Short-
story, they are secondary to the idea, to the con-
ception, to the subject. Those who hold, with a
certain American novelist, that it is no matter what
you have to say, but only how you say it, need not
attempt the Short-story ; for the Short-story, far
more than the Novel even, demands a subject.
The Short-story is nothing if there is no story to
tell. The Novel, so Mr. James told us not long

76 PEN AND INK.

ago, "is, in its broadest definition, a personal im-
pression of life." The most powerful force in
French fiction to-day is M. Emile Zola, chiefly
known in America and England, I fear me greatly,
by the dirt which masks and degrades the real
beauty and firm strength not seldom concealed in
his novelsj and M. Emile Zola declares that the
novelist of the future will not concern himself
with the artistic evolution of a plot : he will take
une bistoire quekonque, any kind of a story, and
make it serve his purpose, — which is to give elab-
orate pictures of life in all its most minute detail^.
The acceptance of these theories is a negation
of the Short-story. Important as are form and
style, the subject of the Short-story is of more im-
portance yet. What you have to tell is of greater
interest than how you tell it. I once heard a
clever American novelist pour sarcastic praise
upon another American novelist, — for novelists,
even American novelists, do not always dwell to-
gether in unity. The subject of the eulogy is the
chief of those who have come to be known as the
International Novelists, and he was praised be-
cause he had invented and made possible a fifth
plot. Hitherto, declared the eulogist, only four
terminations of a novel have been known to the
most enthusiastic and untiring student of fiction.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY.

First, they are married ; or, second, she marries
some one else ; or, thirdly, he marries some one
else; or, fourthly, and lastly, she dies. Now,
continued the panegyrist, a fifth termination
has been shown to be practicable : they are not
married, she does not die, he does, not die, and
nothing happens at all/ As a Short-story need
not be a love-story, it is of no consequence at all
whether they marry or die ; but a Short-story in
which nothing happens at all is an absolute im-
possibility.

Perhaps the diflference between a Short-story
and a Sketch can best be indicated by saying that,
while a Sketch may be still-life, in a Short-story
something always happens^. A Sketch may be an
outline of character, or even a picture of a mood
of mind, but in a Short-story there must be some-
thing done, there must be an action. Yet the
distinction, like that between the Novel and the
Romance, is no longer of vital importance. In the
preface to the * House of the Spven Gables,' Haw-
thorne sets forth the difference between the Novel
and the Romance, and claims for himself the priv-
ileges of the romancer. Mr. Henry James fails to
see this difference. The fact is, that the Short-
story and the Sketch, the Novel and the Romance,
melt and merge one into the other, and no man

78 PEN AND INK.

may mete the boundaries of each, though their
extremes lie far apart. With the more complete
understanding of the principle of development and
evolution in literary art, as in physical nature, we
see the futility of a strict and rigid classification
into precisely defined genera and species. All that
is needful for us to remark now is that the Short-
story has limitless possibilities : it may be as real-
istic as the most prosaic novel, or as fantastic as
the most ethereal romance.

As a touch of fantasy, however slight, is a wel-
come ingredient in a Short-story, and as the Amer-
ican takes more thought of things unseen than the
Englishman, we may have here an incomplete ex-
planation of the superiority of the American Short-
story over the English. "John Bull has suffered
the idea of the Invisible to be very much fattened
out of him," says Mr. Lowell: ** Jonathan is con-
scious still that he lives in the World of the
Unseen as well as of the Seen." It is not enough
to catch a ghost white-handed and to hale him
into the full glare of the electric light. A brutal
misuse of the supernatural is perhaps thaL very
lowest degradation of the art of fiction. Buf " to
mingle^the marvellous rather as a slight, delicate,
and evanescent flavor than as any actual portion
of the substance," to quote from the preface to

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY.

the ' House of the Seven Gables,' this is, or should
be, the aim of the writer of Short-stories when-
ever his feet leave the firm ground of fact as he
strays in the unsubstantial realms of fantasy. In
no one's writings is this better exemplified than
in Hawthorne's ; not even in Poe's. There is a
propriety in Hawthorne's fantasy to which Poe
could not attain. Hawthorne's effects ire moral
where Poe's are merely physical. The situation
and its logical development and the effects to be
got out of it are all Poe thinksi)f. In Hawthorne
the situation, however strange and weird, is
only the outward and visible sign of an inward
and spiritual strugglje. Ethical consequences are
always worrying Hawthorne's soul : but Poe did
not know that there were any ethics.

There are literary evolutionists who, in their
whim of seeing in every original writer a copy of
some predecessor, have declared that Hawthorne
is derived from Tieck, and Poe from Hoffmann,
just as Dickens modelled himself on Smollett and
Thackeray followed in the footsteps of Fielding.
In all four cases the pupil surpassed the mas-
ter, — if haply Tieck and Hoffmann can be consid-
ered as even remotely the masters of Hawthorne
and Poe. When Coleridge was told that Klopstock
was the German Milton, he assented with the dry

8o PEN AND INK.

addendum, "A very German Milton." So is
Hoffmann a very German Poe, and Tieck a very
German Hawthorne. Of a truth, both Poe and
Hawthorne are as American as any one can be. If
the adjective American has any meaning at all, it
qualifies Poe and Hawthorne. They were Ameri-
can to the core. They both revealed the curious
sympathy with Oriental moods of thought which
is often an American characteristic. Poe, with his
cold logic and his mathematical analysis, and Haw-
thorne, with his introspective conscience and his
love of the subtile and the invisible, are repre-
sentative of phases of American character not to
be mistaken by any one who has given thought
to the influence of nationality.

As to which of the two was the greater, discus-
sion is idle, but that Hawthorne was the finer
genius few would deny. Poe, as cunning an
artificer of goldsmith's work, and as adroit in its
vending as was ever M. Josse, declared that
''Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, crea-
tion, imagination, originality, — a trait which in
the literature of fiction is positively worth all the
rest." But with the moral basis of Hawthorne's
work, which had flowered in the crevices and
crannies of New England Puritanism, Poe did not
concern himself. In Poe's hands the 'story of the

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. gl

* Ambitious Guest ' might have thrilled us with a
more powerful horror, but it would have lacked
the ethical beauty which Hawthorne gave it and
which makes it significant beyond a mere feat of
verbal legerdemain. And the subtile simplicity of
the ' Great Stone Face ' is as far from Poe as the
pathetic irony of the * Ambitious Guest.' " In all
his most daring fantasies Hawthbrne is natural,
and, though he may project his vision far beyond
the boundaries of fact, nowhere does he violate
the laws of nature. He had at all times a whole-
some simplicity, and he never showed any trace
of the morbid taint which characterizes nearly all
Poe's work. Hawthorne, one may venture to
say, had the broad sanity of genius, while we
should understand any one who might declare
that Poe had mental disease raised to the n^.

Although it may be doubted whether the fiery
and tumultuous rush of a volcano, which may be
taken to typify Poe, is, as powerful or impressive
in the end as the calm and inevitable progression
of a glacier, to which, for the purposes of this
comparison only, we may liken Hawthorne, yet
the effect and influence of Poe's work are indis-
putable. One might hazard the assertion that in
all Latin countries he is the best known of Ameri-
can authors. Certainly no American writer has

82 PEN AND INK.

been as widely accepted in France. Nothing bet-
ter of its kind has ever been done than the ' Pit
and the Pendulum,' or than the * Fall of the House
of Usher,' which Mr. Stoddard has compared re-
cently with Browning's 'Childe Roland to the
Dark Tower came ' for its power of suggesting
intellectual desolation. Nothing better of its kind
has ever been done than the 'Gold Bug,' or than
the 'Purloined Letter,' or than the 'Murders in
the Rue Morgue/ This last, indeed, is a story of
marvellous skill : it was the first of its kind, and
to this day it remains a model, not only unsur-
passed, but unapproachable. It was the first of
detective stories ; and it has had thousands of imi-
tations and no rival. The originality, the ingenu-
ity, the verisimilitude of this tale and of its fellows
are beyond all praise.- Poe had a faculty which
one may call imaginative ratiocination to a degree
beyond all other writers of fiction. He did not at
all times keep up to the high level, in one style,
of the ' Fall of the House of Usher/ and in another
of the ' Murders in the Rue Morgue,' and it was
not to be expected that he should. Only too
often did he sink to the grade of the ordinary
'Tale from Blackwood ,' which he himself satir-
ized in his usual savage vein of humor. Yet even
in his flimsiest and most tawdry tales we see the

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 83

truth of Mr. Lowell's assertion that Poe had " two
of the prime qualities of genius, — a faculty of
vigorous yet minute analysis, and a wonderful
fecundity of imagination." Mr. Lowell said also
that Poe combined " in a very remarkable manner
two faculties which are seldom found united, — a
power of influencing the mind of the reader by
the impalpable shadows of mystery and a minute-
ness of detail which does not leave a pin or a
button unnoticed. Both are, in truth, the natural
results of the predominating quality of his mind,
to which we have before alluded, — analysis." In
Poe's hands, however, the enumeration of pins
and buttons, the exact imitation of the prosaic
facts of humdrum life in this workaday world, is
not an end, but a means only, whereby he con-
structs and intensifies the shadow of mystery
which broods over the things thus realistically
portrayed.

With the recollection that it is more than half a
century since Hawthorne and Poe wrote their best
Short-stories, it is not a little comic to see now
and again in American newspapers a rash asser-
tion that ** American literature has hitherto been
deficient in good Short-stories," or the reckless
declaration that '*the art of writing Short-stories
has not hitherto been cultivated in the United

84 PEN AND INK.

States." Nothing could be more inexact than
these statements. Almost as soon as America
began to have any literature at all it had good
Short-stories. It is quite within ten, or at the
most twenty, years that the American novel has
come to the front and forced the acknowledgment
of its equality with the English novel and the
French novel ; but for fifty years the American
Short-story has had a supremacy which any com-
petent critic could not but acknowledge. Indeed,
the present excellence of the American novel is
due in great measure to the Short-story; for nearly
every one of the American novelists whose works
are now read by the whole English-speaking race
began as a writer of Short-stories. Although as
a form of fiction the Short-story is not inferior
to the Novel, and although it is not easier, all
things considered, yet its brevity makes its com-
position simpler for the 'prentice hand. Though
the Short-stories of the beginner may not be
good, yet in the writing of Short-stories he shall
learn how to tell a story, he shall discover by ex-
perience the elements of the art of fiction more
readily and, above all, more quickly than if he had
begun on a long and exhausting novel. The
physical strain of writing a full-sized novel is far
greater than the reader can well imagine. To this

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 85

Strain the beginner in fiction may gradually accus^
torn himself by the composition of Short-stories.

(Here, if the digression may be pardoned, occa-
sion serves to say that if our writers of plays had
the same chance that our writers of novels have,
we might now have a school of American drama-
tists of which we should be as proud as of our
school of American novelists. In dramatic com-
position, the equivalent of the Short-story is the
one-act play, be it drama or comedy or comedietta
or farce. As the novelists have learned their trade
by the writing of Short-stories, so the dramatists
might learn their trade, far more difficult as it is
and more complicated, by the writing of one-act
plays. But, while the magazines of the United
States are hungry for good Short-stories, and sift
carefully all that are sent to them, in the hope of
happening on a treasure, the theatres of the
United States are closed to one-act plays, and the
dramatist is denied the opportunity of making a
humble and tentative beginning. The conditions
of the theatre are such that there is little hope of a
change for the better in this respect, — more's the
pity. The manager has a tradition that a * ' broken
bill," a programme containing more than one
play, is a confession of weakness, and he prefers,
so far as possible, to keep his weakness concealed.)

86 PEN AND INK.

When we read. the roll of American novelists,
we see that nearly all of them began as writers of
Short-stories. Some of them, Mr. Bret Harte, for
instance, and Mr. Edward Everett Hale, never got
any farther, or, at least, if they wrote novels,
their novels did not receive the full artistic appre-
ciation and popular approval bestowed on their
ShortrStories. Even Mr. Cable's * Grandissimes '
has not made his readers forget his ' Posson Jone/
nor has Mr. Aldrich's * Queen of Sheba,' charming
as she was, driven from our memory his ' Margery
Daw,' as delightful and as captivating as that other
non-existent heroine, Mr. Austin Dobson's * Doro-
thy.' Mrs. Burnett, Miss Woolson, and Miss Mur-
free put forth volumes of Short-stories before they
attempted the more sustained flight of the full-
fledged Novel. Miss Jewett, Mr. Bunner, Mr.
Bishop, and Mr. Julian Hawthorne wrote Short-
stories before they wrote novels ; and Mr. James
has never gathered into a book from the back-
numbers of magazines the half of his earlier
efforts.

In these references to the American magazine I
believe I have suggested the real reason of the
superiority of the American Short-stories over the
English. It is not only that the eye of patriotism
may detect more fantasy, more humor, a finer

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY.

feeling for art, in these younger United States, but
there is a more emphatic and material reason for
the American proficiency. There is in the United
States a demand for Short-stories which does not
exist in Great Britain, or at any rate not in the
same degree. The Short-story is of very great
importance to the American magazine. But in
the British magazine the serial Novel is the one
thing of consequence, and all else is termed ** pad-
ding/' In England the writer of three-volume
Novels is the best paid of literary laborers. So in
England whoever has the gift of story-telling is
strongly tempted not to essay the difficult art of
writing Short-stories, for which he will receive
only an inadequate reward ; and he is as strongly
tempted to write a long story which may serve
first as a serial and afterward as a three-volume
Novel. The result of this temptation is seen in
the fact that there is not a single English novelist
whose reputation has been materially assisted by
the Short-stories he has written. More than once
in the United States a single Short-story has made
a man known, but in Great Britain such an event
is well-nigh impossible. The disastrous effect on
narrative art of the desire to distend every subject
to the three-volume limit has been dwelt on un-
ceasingly by English critics.

88 PEN AND INK.

The three-volume system is peculiar to Great
Britain : it does not obtain either in France or the
United States. As a consequence, the French and
American writer of fiction is left free to treat his
subject at the length it demands, — no more and
no less. It is pleasant to note that there are signs
of the beginning of the break-up of the system
even in England ; and the protests of the chief
English critics against it are loud and frequent. It
is responsible in great measure for the invention
and protection of the British machine for making
English Novels, of which Mr. Warner told us in
his entertaining essay on fiction. We all know
the work of this machine, and we all recognize
the trade-mark it imprints in the corner. But Mr.
Warner failed to tell us, what nevertheless is a
fact, that this British machine can be geared down
so as to turn out the English short story. Now,
the English short story, as the machine makes it
and as we see it in most English magazines, is
only a little English Novel, or an incident or epi-
sode from an English Novel. It is thus the exact
artistic opposite of the American Short-story, of
which, as we have seen, the chief characteristics
are originality, ingenuity, compression, and, not
infrequently, a touch of fantasy. I do not say, of
course, that the good and genuine Short-story is

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY. 89

not written in England now and then, — for if I
were to make any such assertion some of the best
work of Mr. Stevenson, of Mr. Besant, and of Mr.
Anstey would rise up to contradict me ; but this is
merely an accidental growth, and not a staple of
production. As a rule, in England the artist in fic-
tion does not care to hide his light under a bushel,
and he puts his best work where it will be seen of
all men, — that is to say, not in a Short-story. So
it happens that the most of the brief tales in the
English magazines are not true Short-stories at all,
and that they belong to a lower form of the art of
fiction, in the department with the amplified anec-
dote. It is the three-volume Novel which has killed
the Short-story in England.

Certain of the remarks in the present paper I
put forth first anonymously in the columns of the
Saturday Review. To my intense surprise, they
were controverted in the Nation. The critic be-
gan by assuming that the writer had said that
Americans preferred Short -stories to Novels.
What had really been said was that there was a
steady demand for Short-stories in American mag-
azines, whereas in England the demand was
rather for serial Novels. ** In the first place," said
the critic, "Americans do not prefer Short-stories,
as is shown by the enormous number of British

PEN AND INK.

Novels circulated among us; and in the second
place, tales of the quiet, domestic kind, which
form the staple of periodicals like AU tbe Year
Round and Chambers s Journal, have here thou-
sands of readers where native productions, how-
ever clever and original, have only hundreds,
since the former are reprinted by the country
papers and in the Sunday editions of city papers
as rapidly and regularly as they are produced at
home." Now, the answer to this is simply that
these English Novels and English stories are re-
printed widely in the United States, not because
the American people prefer them to anything else,
but because, owing to the absence of international
copyright, they cost nothing. That the American
people prefer to read American stories when they
can get them is shown by the enormous circula-
tion of the periodicals which make a specialty of
American fiction.

I find I have left myself little space to speak of
the Short-story as it exists in other literatures
than those of Great Britain and the United States.
The conditions which have killed the Short-story
in England do not obtain elsewhere ; and else-
where there are not a few good writers of Short-
stories. Turgenef, Bjornsen, Sacher-Masoch, Frey-
tag, Lindau, are the names which one recalls

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY.

at once and without eflfort as masters in the
art and mystery of the Short-story. Turgenef s
Short-stories, in particular, it would be difficult to
commend too warmly. But it is in France that
the Short-story flourishes most abundantly. In
France the conditions are not unlike those in the
United States ; and, although there are few French
magazines, there are many Parisian newspapers
of a wide hospitality to literature. The demand
for the Short-story has called forth an abundant
supply. Among the writers of the last generation
who excelled in the conte — which is almost the
exact French equivalent for Short-story, as nour-
veUe may be taken to indicate the story which is
merely short, the episode, the incident, the ampli-
fied anecdote — were Alfred de Musset, Theophile
Gautier, and Prosper Merimee. The best work
of Merimee has never been surpassed. As com-
pression was with him almost a mania, as, indeed,
it was with his friend Turgenef, he seemed born on
purpose to write Short-stories. Turgenef carried
his desire for conciseness so far that he seems al-
ways to be experimenting to see how much of his
story he may leave out. One of the foremost writ-
ers of contes is Edmond About, whose exquisite
humor is known to all readers of the * Man with
the Broken Ear,' — a Short-story in conception,

PEN AND INK.

though unduly extended in-execution. Few of the
charming contes of M. Alphonse Daudet, or of the
earlier Short-stories of M. Emile Zola, have been,
translated into English ; and the poetic tales of M.
Franfois Coppee are likewise unduly neglected in
this country. The ' Abbe Constantin ' of M. Ludo-
vic Halevy has been read by many, but the Gallic
satire of his more Parisian Short-stories has been
neglected, perhaps wisely, in spite of their broad
humor and their sharp wit. In the contes of
M. Guy de Maupassant there is a manly vigor
. pushed at times to excess ; and in the very singu-
lar collection of stories which M. Jean Richepin
has called the ' Morts Bizarres ' we find a modern
continuation of the Poe tradition, always more
potent in France than elsewhere. I have given
this list of French writers of Short-stories merely
as evidence that the art flourishes in France as
well as in the United States, and not at all with
a view of recommending the fair readers of this
essaylet to send at once for the works of these
French writers, which are not always — indeed,
one may say not often — in exact accordance with
the conventionalities of Anglo-Saxon propriety.

The Short-story should not be void or without
form, but its form may be whatever the author
please. He has an absolute liberty of choice. It

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHORT-STORY.

may be a personal narrative, like Poe's * Descent
into the Maelstrom ' or Mr. Hale's * My Double,
and how he Undid me ' ; . it may be impersonal,
like Mr. Perkins's ' Devil-Puzzlers ' or Colonel De
Forest's * Brigade Commander ' ; it may be a co-
nundrum, like Mr. Stockton's insoluble query, the
* Lady or the Tiger ? ' it may be * A Bundle of Let-
ters,' like Mr. James's story, or 'A Letter and a
Paragraph,' like Mr. Bunner's ;• it may be a medley
of letters and telegrams and narrative, like Mr.
Aldrich's * Margery Daw ' ; it may be cast in any
one of these forms, or in a combination of all of
them, or in a wholly new form, if haply such may
yet be found by diligent search. Whatever its
form, it should have symmetry of design. If it
have also wit or humor, pathos or poetry, and
especially a distinct and unmistakable flavor of
originality, so much the better. But the chief
requisites are compression, originality, ingenuity,
and now and again a touch of fantasy. Some-
times we may detect in a writer of Short-stories
a tendency toward the over-elaboration of in-
genuity, toward the exhibition of ingenuity for its
own sake, as in a Chinese puzzle. But mere
cleverness is incompatible with greatness, and to
commend a writer as "very clever" is not to
give him high praise. From this fault of super-

PEN AND INK.

subtilty women are free for the most part. They
are more likely than men to rely on broad human
emotion, and their tendency in error is toward the
morbid analysis of a high-strung moral situation.

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

Mr. Frederick Locker.

ATRiciAN rhymes" is the apt phrase
Mr. Stedman coined to characterize
that kind of vers de societe, name-
less in English, which is more than
mere society-verse. It describes Mr.
Locker's poetry more accurately than Mr. Austin
Dobson's, for example, or Mr. Calverley's, since
Mr. Locker confines himself more strictly within
the circle of " good society," of Park Lane, and of
fashion. Mr. Locker is the du Maurier of song,
and his * London Lyrics ' are as entertaining and
as instructive to the student of Victorian manners
as Mr. du Maurier's ' Pictures of English Society.'
Mr. Locker has succeeded Praed as the laureate of
the world, and he ignores the flesh, and is igno-
rant of the devil, just like Praed, and just like so-
ciety itself. But it seems to me that Mr. Locker's
range is wider than Praed's, whose success lay

96 PEN AND INK.

almost altogether in his songs of society ; Praed
was out of place when he ventured far from May-
fair and beyond the sound of St. George's in Han-
over Square ; while Mr. Locker's Pegasus pauses
at the mouth of Cite Fadette as gracefully as it
treads the gravel of Rotten Row. The later poet
has wider sympathies than the elder, who, indeed,
may be said to have had but one note. The
' Vicar ' is a beautiful bit of verse, but its touch of
tenderness sets it apart from all Praed's other
work, which is brilliant with a hard and metallic
brilliancy. Praed dazzles almost to weariness;
his lines stand out sharply like fireworks at mid-
night. More brilliant than Praed no poet could
well be. More pleasing Mr. Locker is, and he
gives a higher pleasure. He has wit like Praed,
but far more humor; and the soft radiance of
humor never tires the eye like the quick flashes of
wit. With broader humor, he has a broader
humanity and a finer individuality. In short, the
difference between the two may be summed up
in favor of the younger man, by saying that Mr.
Locker can write Praedesque poems, — compare
the * Belle of the Ball-room,' for instance, and
' A Nice Correspondent,' — while it may well be
doubted whether Praed could have emulated Mr.
Locker's * To My Mistress' and 'At Her Window.'

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

Of course, it is easy to say that Mr. Locker con-
tinues the tradition of Prior and Praed ; it is easy
also to see that, in two respects, at least, the pro-
gression shows the progress of the age. One im-
provement is in the form used by the poet ; the
other in the feeling, the temper of the poet him-
self. Praed contented himself with putting his
best work into the eight-line stanza, now a little
worn from overwork :

Our love was like most other loves ;

A little glow, a little shiver,
A rosebud and a pair of gloves,

And * Fly not yet * — upon the river ;
Some jealousy of some one's heir,

Some hopes of dying broken-hearted,
A miniature, a lock of hair,

The usual vows — and then we parted.

In this metre, Mr. Locker and Mr. Austin Dob-
son, in England, and Mr. Saxe, in America, have
written verses that Praed might not disown;
but though the metal was theirs, the mould was
Praed's. Mr. Locker's best work has not gone
into any one form ; he has wisely varied his
metre; he has invented of his own, and he has
borrowed from his neighbor. 'A Nice Corre-
spondent' is Swinburnian in its rhythm, and

PEN AND INK.

*To My Grandmother' repeats the measures of
Holmes's 'Last Leaf,' a delightful and most diffi-
cult metre, lending itself easily to intricate har-
monies, and not to be attempted now by meaner
hands :

This Relative of mine,
Was she scventy-and-nine

When she died?
By the canvas may be seen
How she looked at seventeen.

As a Bride.

Beneath a summer tree
Her maiden reverie

Has a charm :
Her ringlets are in taste ;
What an arm ! . . . what a waist

For an arm !

Is not this the perfection of daintiness and deli-
cacy? Is it not delightful — this mingling of sly
fun and playful banter? And this brings us to
the second quality, in which Mr. Locker and Mr.
Dobson are plainly superior to Prior and Praed —
in their treatment of woman. Prior thought of
women with little feeling, and he wrote of them
with little respect ; however much he might pre-
tend to worship a dame or a damsel, he kept a

TWO LATTER-DAY LYlUStS. jag

keen and unkind eye on her failings. At all times
his tone toward women is one of good-natured
contempt, often ill-concealed. With Praed, a
complete change had come in the attitude; he
is avowedly a friendly critic, and yet his verse
catches no tinge of warmth from his friendliness.
Though he may have felt deeply, he lets his scep-
ticism and his wit hide his feeling until we are
well-nigh forced to doubt whether he had any
feeling to hide. The lively beauties who figure in
Praed's glittering verse are far more true to life
than the French fictions of Prior, but the ladies of
Mr. Locker and Mr. Dobson are quite as charm-
ing and indubitably more natural. They are true
women, too, not mere figments of the fancy;
they are the result of later and deeper observation ;
and they have far more variety from the given
prototype. Prior wrote of women at large, and
Praed rang the changes on the ' Belle of the Ball-
room.' Now, Mr. Locker has a gallery of girls, all
fresh and ingenuous young maidens. Prior did
not respect women ; Praed admired them coldly ;
Mr. Locker has a warm regard for them and a
manly respect, and also a demure humor which
sees into their wiles and their weaknesses quite as
sharply as did Prior or Praed.
Having set forth thus some of the things which

lOO PEN AND INK.

Mr. Locker, the poet, is and is not, it may be well
to give a few facts about Mr. Locker, the man. He
was born in 1821. His father, Edward Hawke
Locker, was in the public service, and took a
warm interest in literature and art. His grand-
father, Captain W. Locker, R. N., was an old
friend of Lord Nelson's; and both CoUingwood
and Nelson served under him. Mr. Locker com-
posed little until late in life, or at least until he was
thirty ; and he found great difficulty, so he wrote
to a friend, "in persuading editors to have any-
thing to say to my verses ; biut Thackeray believed
in me, and used to say, * Never mind. Locker, our
verse may be small beer, but at any rate it is the
right tap.' " Thus encouraged, Mr.' Locker wrote
on, and in time editors began to relent. In 1857
he gathered his scattered poems and put them forth
in a single volume as 'London Lyrics.' As edition
followed edition he has added the few poems he
has written of late years, and has dropped those of
his earlier poems that he thought unworthy. The
latest published edition — the eighth, 1 think it
is — is scarcely any heavier than the first. Later
than this, however, is a little book, beautifully
printed and beautifully bound, which Mr. Locker
has recently given to his friends, and which con-
tains a special selection of his very best work.

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. loi

made by Mr. Austin Dobson, who has prefixed
this friendly little sextain :

Apollo made, one April day,
A new thing in the rhyming way;
Its turn was neat, its wit was clear,
It wavered 'twixt a smile and tear ;
Then Mom us gave a touch satiric,
And it became a 'London Lyric'

Besides putting his ov/n' vers de societe into a
book, Mr. Locker made a collection, under the title
of 'Lyra Elegantiarum/ of the best specimens in
English of the vers de societe and vers d* occasion of
poets no longer living. Of this a new and revised
edition was published in 1 867 ; it is a model of what
such a selection should be ; and it was ushered in by
an essay of the editor'^ — all too brief — on the art
of writing vers de societe. In 1 879 Mr. Locker pub-
lished a most amusing little volume of * Patch-
work/ containing bits of rhyme and bits of talk,
with here a jest and there a joke, excerpts from
his commonplace book, and enlivened with a few
of the anecdotes he is wont to tell most eflFectively .
For the lyrist of London is no recluse ; he is a man
of the world, even more than he is a man of letters.
In life as in literature he has both humor and good-
humor. Although satiric by nature, he is thor-

I02 PEN AND INK.

oughly sympathetic and generous. Well-to-do in
the world, he has been able to indulge his liking
for the little things in art which make life worth
living. His collections of china, of drawings, of
engravings, are all excellent; and his literary
curiosities, first editions of great books and
precious autographs of great men, make a poor
American wickedly envious. He is a connoisseur
of the best type, never buying trash or bargain-
hunting; knowing what he wants, and why he
wants it, and what it is worth ; and his treasures
are freely opened to any literary brother who is
seeking after truth.

In studying Mr. Locker's pictures of English
society we cannot but feel that the poet has drawn
his lines with the living model before him. It is in
the distinctively London-town lyrics — in the * Pil-
grims of Pall Mall,' in 'Rotten Row,' in * At Hurl-
ingham, * in * St. James' Street, ' and in ' Piccadilly, ' —

Piccadilly ! Shops, palaces, bustle, and breeze,
The whirring of wheels and the murmur of trees,

By night or by day, whether noisy or stilly,
Whatever my mood is, I love Piccadilly.

—it is in these that Mr. Locker most shows the
influence of Praed, which is decidedly less apparent
in the less local poems, — in 'A Garden Lyric,' in

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 103

* On an Old Mufif, ' in * Geraldine, ' and in the sportive
and brightsome lines on * A Human Skull ' :

A human Skull, 1 bought it passing cheap ;

No doubt 'twas dearer to its first employer !
I thought mortality did well to keep

Some mute memento of the Old Destroyer.

Time was, some may have prized its blooming skin ;

Here lips were woo'd, perhaps, in transport tender ;
Some may have chuck'd what was a dimpled chin,

And never had my doubt about its gender.

• ••••••

It may have held (to shoot some random shots)
Thy brains, Eliza Fry ! or Baron Byron's ;

The wits of Nelly Gwynne or Doctor Watts —
Two quoted bards. Two philanthropic sirens.

But this, I trust, is clearly understood.
If man or woman, if adored or hated —

Whoever own'd this Skull was not so good
Nor quite so bad as many may have stated.

Besides the playful humor of these poems, two
things especially are to be noted in them — individu-
ality and directness of expression . Whatever influ-
ence you may think you see here of some other poet,
Horace, or Beranger, or Gautier, or Thackeray, —
and the variety of these names shows the poet's
versatility, — you cannot doubt that these poems
are of a truth Mr. Locker's own, stamped with his

104 P^N ^^^ ^^'^•

seal, marked with his image and superscription.
Here plainly is a man with a character of his own,
looking at life through his own eyes, now laughing
with hearty gayety, again smiling a sad smile :

** I still can laugh" is still my boast,

But mirth has sounded gayer;
And which provokes my laughter most.

The preacher or the player?
Alacky 1 cannot laugh at what

Once made us laugh so freely ;
For Nestroy and Grassot are not,

And where is Mrs. Keeley?

Quite as noteworthy as the individuality of the
poet is his studied clearness. There is never an
inversion or an involution ; the verse is as straight-
forward as prose, and as easy to be * ' understanded
of the people." The rhythm flows freely; the
rhymes are neat and novel, and never forced ; and
the manner never intrudes itself to the injury of
the matter. But Mr. Locker is not like Theophile
Gautier, that Benvenuto Cellini of verse, nor like
the cunning artificers of Gautier's school — poets
who polish a poor little idea until they can see
themselves in it. That he is ever going over his
work with the file any one can see who will com-
pare the first stanzas of 'Geraldine and I,' and of
*A Garden Lyric'; but he never overweights his

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

105

verse with a gorgeous setting, from selfish delight
in the skill of his workmanship. Indeed, Mr. Locker
sometimes has carried his search for simplicity of
statement almost too far. But so many poets now-
adays are as hard to understand as a Greek chorus,
that we ought to be thankful to one who takes
pains to be clear, and direct, and unaffected .

Affectation, indeed, is always a stumbling-block
in the path of the maker of vers de societe ; but in
* London Lyrics ' there are no traces of any slip.
The poems are as simple and honest as the verse
is direct and clear. Nowhere is affectation more
easy than in addressing childhood ; and, with the
exception of Victor Hugo and Longfellow, per-
haps no poet of our day has written of children as
often as Mr. Locker. He has made a * Rhyme of
One,' and 'Little Dinky,' a rhyme of less than one
(she is twelve weeks old). He has written ' To
Lina Oswald' (aged five years), and to *Geraldine'
(who is fifteen); and * Gertrude's Necklace' be-
longed to a maiden not much older. And all
these poems to the young reveal the subdued
humor and the worldly wit we have seen in the
others written for their elders and betters, their
pastors and masters, and they haye even more of
delicate tenderness and of true sentiment tainted
by no trace of sentimentality.

I06 PEN AND INK.

One of Mr. Locker's songs has a lyric grace and
an evanescent sweetness, recalling Herrick or
Suckling:

AT HER WINDOW.

Beating Heart! we come again

Where my Love reposes ;
This is MabePs window-pane ;

These are Mabel's roses.

Is she nested ? Does she kneel

In the twilight stilly,
Lily-clad from throat to heel,

She, my Virgin Lily ?

Soon the wan, the wistful stars,

Fading, will forsake her ;
Elves of light, on beamy bars,

Whisper then, and wake her.

Let this friendly pebble plead

At the flowery grating ;
If she hear me, will she heed ?

Mabel J I am waiting,

Mabel will be decked anon.

Zoned in bride's apparel ;
Happy zone I oh, hark to yon

Passion-shaken carol.

Sing thy song, thou tranced thrush.

Pipe thy best, thy clearest ;
Hush, her lattice moves, O, hush —

Dearest Mabel! — dearest.

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

107

Is not this a marvel of refinement and restraint ?
It is as purely a lyric as the song of the thrush
itself. Especially in poems like this is it that Mr.
Locker is wholly other than Praed, with whom
people persist in linking him. He has at once a
finer vein of poetry and a broader vein of humor.
Perhaps, after all, humor is Mr. Locker's chief
characteristic, — a gentle humor, always under
control, and never boisterous or burly, yet frank
and free and full of mischief, — the humor of a
keen observer, who is at once a gentleman and a
poet. What, for example, can be more comic in
conception, or more clear-cut in execution, than
this?—

A TERRIBLE INFANT.

I recollect a nurse call'd Ann,

Who carried me about the grass,
And one fine day a fine young man

Came up and kissed the pretty lass.
She did not make the least objection !

Thinks 1— "y^i&dp /
IVbm I can talk I'll tell mamma ! "
And that's my earliest recollection.

It is in this quality of humor mainly, and in the
fact that his verse is more individual than imper-
sonal, that Mr. Locker's gifts differ from those of
Mr. Austin Dobson, There is no need to make

Io8 PEN AND INK.

a comparison of Mr. Locker's work with Mr.
Dobson's ; and, at best, comparisons are futile.
Criticism is nowadays the tenth muse, and I am
sure that Mrs. Malaprop would say that compari-
sons do not become that young woman. Suffice
it to state that Mr. Frederick Locker and Mr. Aus-
tin Dobson stand, each on his own ground, at the
head of the poets who sing of English society as it
is. Mr. Locker is the elder, and it was to him
that Mr. Dobson dedicated his ' Proverbs in Porce-
lain,' in these lines :

Is it to kindest friend I send

This nosegay gathered new ?
Or is it more to critic sure.

To singer clear and true ?
I know not which, indeed, nor need :

All three I found — in you.

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

Ih
Mr. Austin Dobson.

5 Mr. Lang told us in his sympathetic
paper on M. Theodore de Banville,
some literary reputations are like the
fairies in that they cannot cross run-
ning water. Others again, it seems

to me, are rather like the misty genii of the Ara-
bian Nights, which loom highest when seen from
afar. Poe, for example, is more appreciated in
England than at home; and Cooper is given a
more lofty rank by French than by American
critics. In much the same manner, we note,
Qrlyle gained the ear of an American audience
when he was not listened to with attention in
Great Britain ; and the scattered verses of Praed
were collected together for American admirers
long before the appearance of an English edition.
And so it is, I think, with Mr. Austin Dobson,
whose position as a leader in one division of Eng-

T09

no PEN AND INK.

lish poetry was recognized more immediately and
more unhesitatingly in these United States than
in his native Great Britain. To Mr. Dobson the
young school of American writers of familiar
verse — to use Cowper's admirable phrase — look
up as to a master ; and his poems are read and
pondered and imitated by not a few of the more
promising of our younger poets.

Mr. Austin Dobson was born at Plymouth, Jan-
uary 1 8, 1840. He comes of a family of civil
engineers, and it was as an engineer that his
grandfather, toward the end of the last century,
went to France, where he settled, and married a
French lady. Among the earliest recollections of
Mr. Dobson's father was his arrival in Paris on
one side of the Seine as the Russians arrived on
the other. This must have been in 1814. But
the French boy had long become an English man
when the poet was born. At the age of eight or
nine Austin Dobson was taken by his parents —
so a biographer tells us — "to Holyhead, in the
island of Anglesea; he was educated at Beaumaris,
at Coventry, and finally at Strasburg, whence he
returned, at the age of sixteen, with the inten-
tion of becoming a civil engineer." But in De-
cember, 1856, he accepted an appointment in the
civil service, where he has remained ever since.

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 1 1 1

Thus he has been able to act on the advice of
Coleridge, often urged again by Dr. Holmes, to
the effect **that a literary man should have an-
other calling." Dr. Holmes adds the sly sug-
gestion that he should confine himself to it;
and this is what — for nearly ten years — Mr.
Dobson did. He dabbled a little in art, having,
like Theophile Gautier, the early ambition of be-
coming a painter. He learned to draw a little on
wood. He wrote a little, mostly in prose. In
fact, there are only four poems in the first edition
of ' Vignettes in Rhyme ' which were written be-
fore 1868. It was in this year that St. Paul's
magazine was started by Anthony TroUope, an
editor at once sympathetic and severe; he ap-
preciated good work, and was unsparing in the
kindly criticism which might make it better. In
St. Paul's, therefore, between March, 1868, and
March, 1874, appeared nearly twoscore of Mr.
Dobson's pieces, including some of his very best :
*Tu Quoque,' 'A Dialogue from Plato,' 'Une
Marquise,' 'An Autumn Idyll,' 'Dorothy,' 'A
Gentleman of the Old School,' ' Avice,' — with its
hazardous, bird-like ^ect, French in a way and in
exquisite taste, — and the subtle and pathetic
'Drama of the Doctor's Window.' In October,
1873, there was published the first edition of

112 PEN AND INK.

* Vignettes in Rhyme/ and the poet received for
the first time that general recognition which de-
nies itself to the writer of verses scattered here
and there, throughout magazines and newspapers.
' Vignettes in Rhyme ' passed into its third edi-
tion ; and less than four years after its appearance
Mr. Dobson made a second collection of his verses,
published in May, 1877, as * Proverbs in Porce-
lain.' From these two volumes the author made
a selection, adding a few poems written since the
appearance of the second book; and thus prepared
the collective American volume, called * Vignettes
in Rhyme,' issued by Henry Holt & Co. in 1880,
with a graceful and alluring introduction by Mr.
Stedman. * Old-World Idylls,' published in Lon-
don in the fall of 1883, is based on this American
selection of 1880. It has been followed by *At
the Sign of the Lyre,' which includes most of the
poetry he wrote before 1885. Unfortunately we
have not Mr. Dobson's complete poems even in
these two collections, for his own fastidious taste
has excluded poems which the less exacting reader
had learned to like, and which the admirers of fine
humorous verse will not willingly let die. Let us
hope that there will be vouchsafed to us, in due
time, a volume in which we may treasure Mr.
Dobson's 'Complete Poetical Works.' Akin to

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

113

the fastidiousness which rejects certain poems
altogether — and quite as annoying to many — is
the fastidiousness with which the poet is contin-
ually going over his verses with a file, polishing
until they shine again, smoothing an asperity
here, and there rubbing out a blot. This is
always a dangerous pastime, and the poet is rarely
well advised who attempts it, as all students of
Lord Tennyson will bear witness, If the poet is
athirst for perfection, he may lay his poems by
for the Horatian space of nine years, but when
they are once printed and published, he had best
keep his hands off them. Of course the most
of Mr. Dobson's alterations are unexceptionable
improvements, yet there are a few that we reject
with abhorrence.

Mr, Aldrich has said that Mr. Dobson ** has the
grace of Suckling and the finish of Herrick, and is
easily master of both in metrical art." The beauty
of his poetry is due in great measure to its lyric
lightness. He has many lines and many whole
poems which sing themselves into the memory,
and cannot be thrust thence. Who that has made
acquaintance with the 'Ladies of St. James's'
can forget "Phillida, my Phillida"? And who
cannot at will call up before him Autonoe and
Rosina and Rose and all the other ^'damosels,

114 PEN AND INK.

blithe as the belted bees," whom the poet has
set before us with so much breezy freshness ?
To know them is to love them, and to love
the poet who has sung them into being. Next
to the airy grace and the flowing and unfailing
humor which inform all Mr. Dobson's poems,
perhaps the quality which most deserves to be
singled out is their frank and hearty wholesome-
ness. There is nothing sickly about them, or
morbid, or perverse, as there is about so much
contemporary British verse. Mr. Dobson is entirely
free from the besetting sin of those minor poets
who sing only in a minor key. He has no trace
of affectation, and no taint of sentimentality. He
is simple and sincere. His delicacy is manly, and
not effeminate. There is a courtly dignity about
all his work ; and there is nowhere a hint of bad
taste. Mr. Locker once spoke to me of the * Un-
finished Song,' and said that **the spirit is so
beautiful"; and of a truth the spirit of all Mr.
Dobson's work is beautiful. .There is unfailing
elevation. Mr. Dobson, in Joubert's phrase, never
forgets that the lyre is a winged instrument. Here
is a lyric, not one of his best known, and not in
the style he most frequently attempts ; but it is
lifted out of commonplace, though the subject is

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

115

hackneyed and worn; it soars, and sings as it
soars, like the lark :

A SONG OF THE FOUR SEASONS.

When Spring comes laughing

By vale and hill,
By wind-flower walking

And daffodil, —
Sing stars of morning,

Sing morning skies.
Sing blue of speedwell.

And my Love's eyes.

When comes the Summer,

Full-leaved and strong,
And gay birds gossip

The orchard long, —
Sing hid, sweet honey

That no bee sips ;
Sing red, red roses.

And my Love's lips.

When Autumn scatters

The leaves again,
And piled sheaves bury

The broad-wheeled wain,—
Sing flutes of harvest

Where men rejoice ;
Sing rounds of reapers,

And my Love's voice.

1 1 6 PEN AND INK.

But when comes Winter

With hail and storm,
And red fire roaring

And ingle warm, —
Sing first sad going

Of friends that part ;
Then sing glad meeting,

And my Love's heart.

And with all this elevation and lyric lightness
there is no lack of true pathos and genuine feeling
for the lowly and the hopeless. More than once
has Mr. Dobson expressed his sympathy for the
striving, and especially for those strugglers who
are handicapped in the race, and who eat their
hearts in silent revolt against hard circumstances :

Ah, Reader, ere you turn the page,

I leave you this for moral : —
Remember those who tread life's stage
With weary feet and scantest wage.

And ne'er a leaf for laurel.

The best of Mr. Dobson's poems result from a
happy mingling of a broad and genial humanity
with an extraordinarily fine artistic instinct. Jiist
as Chopin declared that there were paintings at the
sight of which he heard music, so it may be said
that there are poems the hearing of which calls up
a whole gallery of pictures. Side by side with

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

117

the purely lyric pieces are as many more as purely
pictorial. The ' Cure's Progress/ for example, is
it not a like masterpiece of genre? And the bal-
lade * On a Fan, that Belonged to the Marquise de
Pompadour,' with its wonderful movement and
spirit, and its apt suggestion of the courtiers and
courtesans "thronging the CEH-de-Bomf through,"
is it not a perfect picture of

The little great, the infinite small thing

That ruled the hour when Louis Quinze was king?

This is a Fragonard, as the other is a Meissonnier.
It is not that the pathetic * Story of Rosina ' has
for its hero Franjois Boucher, or that other poems
abound in references to Watteau and Vanloo and
Hogarth; it is not even that these references
are never at random, and always reveal an exact
knowledge and a nice appreciation ; it is rather
that Mr. Dobson is a painter at heart, in a degree
far from common even in these days of so-called
" word-painting." He excels in the art of calling
up a scene before you by a few motions of his
magic pen ; and, once evoked, the scene abides
with you alway. Mr. E. A. Abbey told me that
once in a nook of rural England he happened
suddenly on a sun-dial, and that lines from Mr.
Dob^on's poem with that title rose to his lips at

1 1 8 PEN AND INK.

once, and he felt as though nature had illustrated
the poet.

This delightful effect is produced by no abuse
of the customary devices of *' word-painting, "
and by no squandering of " local color." On the
contrary, Mr. Dobson is sober in his details, and
rarely wastes time in description. He hits oflf a
scene in a few happy strokes ; there is no piling
of a Pelion of adjectives on an Ossa of epithets.
The picture is painted with the utmost economy
of stroke. Mr. Dobson's method is like that of
the etchers who work in the bath ; his hand needs
to be both swift and sure. Thus there is always
a perfect unity of tone ; there is always a shutting
out of everything which is not essential to the pict-
ure. Consider the ballad of the Armada and the
'Ballad of Beau Brocade,' — a great favorite with
Dr. Holmes, by the way, — and see if one is not
as truly seventeenth century in thought and feeling
as the other is eighteenth century, while both are
thoroughly and robustly English. And how capv
tivatingly Chinese are the verses about the " little
blue mandarin " I

Of the French pictures I have already spoken,
but inadequately, since 1 omitted to cite the ' Prov-
erbs in Porcelain," which I should ascribe to a
French poet, if I knew any Frenchman who could

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

119

have accomplished so winning a commingling of
banter and of grace, of high breeding and of play-
fulness. How Roman are the various Horatian
lyrics, and, above all, how Greek is 'Autonoe'I
" ' Autonoe,' •' as a friend writes me, *'is the most
purely beautiful of all Mr. Dobson's work. It does
not touch the heart, but it rests the spirit. Most
so-called * classicism ' shows us only the white
temple, the clear high sky, the outward beauty
of form and color. This gives us the warm air
of spring and the life that pulses in a girl's veins
like the soft swelling of sap in a young tree. This
is the same feeling that raises ' As You Like It '
above all pastoral poetry. Our nineteenth cen-
tury sensibilities are so played on by the troubles,
the sorrdws, the little vital needs and anxieties
of the world around us, that sometimes it does
us good to get out into the woods and fields
of another world entirely, if only the atmosphere
is not chilled and rarefied by the lack of the breath
of humanity. There are times when the * Drama
of the Doctor's Window' would excite us, but
when 'Autonoe' would rest us — and not with
a mere selfish intellectual rest."

About twelve years ago, early in 1 876, Mr. Dob-
son began to turn his attention to what are gener-
ally known as the French forms of verse, although

I20 PEN AND INK.

they are not all of them French. Oddly enough,
it happens that the introduction, at Mr. Dobson's
hands, of these French forms into English literature
is due — indirectly at least — to an American. In
criticising Mr. Dobson's earlier verses in ' Victorian
Poets,' Mr. Stedman amiably admonished him that
"such a poet, to hold the hearts he has won, not
only must maintain his quality, but strive to vary
his style." This warning from the American
critic, this particular Victorian poet, perhaps hav-
ing some inner monitions of his own, took to
heart, and he began at once to cast about for some
new thing. His first find was the 'Odes Funam-
bulesques' of M. Theodore de Banville, the reviver
of the triolet, the rondeau, and the ballade. Here
was a new thing — a truly new thing, since it was
avowedly an old thing. Mr. Dobson had written
a set of triolets already, in 1 874 ; it was in May,

1876, that he published the first original ballade
ever written in English, the firm and vigorous
'Prodigals,' slightly irregular in its repetition of
rhymes, but none the less a most honorable begin-
ning. Almost at the same time he attempted also
the rondeau and the rondel. A year later, in May,

1877, he published his second volume of verse,
'Proverbs in Porcelain,' and this, followed almost
immediately by Mr. Gosse's easy and learned ' Plea

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 121

for Certain Exotic Forms of Verse,' in the CornUU
Magazine oi ]\x\y , 1877, drew general attention to
the new weapons with which the poet's armory
had been enriched.

It would be idle to maintain that they have met
with universal acceptance. Mr. Stedman, when
introducing the author to the American public,
confesses that he is not certain whether to thank
Mr. Dobson or to condole with him on bringing
into fashion the ballade and the rondeau and its
fellows. Perhaps this was partly due to the sudden
rush of versifiers who wreaked themselves on
these forms, and did their little best to bring them
into disrepute. Perhaps it was due to a wider dis-
like of metrical limitations and of all that tempts the
poet to expend any of his strength otherwise than
on the straightforward delivery of his message.

Yet rhyme itself, as M. Edmond Scherer tells us,
"is a very curious thing, and it is a very com-
plex pleasure which it gives. We do not like to
confess how great in every art is the share of
difficulty vanquished, and yet it is difficulty van-
quished which gives the impression of surprise,
and it is surprise which gives interest ; it is the
unexpected which gives us the sense of the writer's
power." The testimony of Sidney Lanier — an
untiring student of his art and its science — is to

122 PEN AND INK.

the same effect: "It is only cleverness and small
talent which is afraid of its spontaneity; the
genius, the great artist, is forever ravenous after
new forms, after technic ; he will follow you to
the ends of the earth, if you will enlarge his ar-
tistic science, if you will give him a fresh form."
Finally, the fact remains that great poets — Dante,
Milton, Wordsworth — have not scorned the son-
net's scanty plot of ground ; and the sonnet is as
rigid and quite as difficult, if you play the game
fairly, as either the ballade or the rondeau . The ron-
deau and rondel, have they not a charm of their
own when handled by a genuine poet? And the
ballade, — that little three-act comedy in rhyme
with its epigram-epilogue of an envoy, — has it
not both variety and dignity?

For the Malayan pantoum, as for the Franco-
Italian sestina, with their enervating and exasper-
ating monotony, there is really nothing to be said.
And perhaps there is no need to say much for the
tiny triolet, eflfective as it may be for occasional
epigram, or for the elaborate and stately chant-
royal, which is a feat of skill, no more and no less ;
that Mr. Dobson has done it as well as he has
suggests, perhaps, only the pertinent query as
to whether it was well worth doing. Perhaps
no more must be said in favor of the dainty

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

123

little villanelle — a form which exists under the
greatest disadvantage, since the first and typical
specimen, the ever fresh and graceful 'J'ai perdu
ma tourterelle' of Passerat, remains to this day un-
surpassable and unapproached. But the rondeau
and rondel carry no such weight, and in the hands
of a master of metres they are capable of being
filled with a simple beauty most enjoyable. What
could be more delicate, more pensive, more charm-
ing than this rondel of Mr. Dobson's? —

THE WANDERER.

Love comes back to his vacant dwelling, —
The old, old Love that we knew of yore !
We see him stand by the open door,

With his great eyes sad, and his bosom swelling.

He makes as though in our arms repelling.
He fain would lie as he lay before ; —
Love comes back to his vacant dwelling, —

The old, old Love that we knew of yore !

Ah, who shall help us from over-telling

That sweet forgotten, forbidden lore !

E'en as we doubt in our heart once more.
With a rush of tears to our eyelids welling^
Love comes back to his vacant dwelling.

The ballade, however, is by far the best of all
these forms. I hold it second to the sonnet alone.

124

PEN AND INK.

and for some purposes superior even to the sonnet.
It is fair to say that it is the only one of the French
poems which in France itself has held its own
against the Italian sonnet. The instrument used
by Clement Marot, by Villon, — that "voice out
of the slums of Paris," as Mr. Matthew Arnold
called him, — by La Fontaine, and in later times by
Albert Glatigny and Theodore de Banville, is surely
worthy of honor. In Villon's hands it has dignity
and depth, in Glatigny's it has pathos, and in Marot's,
in Mr. Dobson's, and in Mr. Lang's it has playfulness
and gayety. I believe Mr. Dobson himself likes the
* Ballade of Imitation ' better than any of his other
ballades, while I confess my own preference for the
'Ballade of Prose and Rhyme,' the only ballade a
double refrain worthy to be set alongside Clement
Marot's 'Frere Lubin.' It is almost too familiar to
quote here at length, and yet it must be quoted per-
force, for nohow else can I get the testimony of my
best witness fully before the jury :

THE BALLADE OF PROSE AND RHYME.
(BaUadt a Double Rejrain.)

When the ways are heavy with mire and rut,

In November fogs, in December snows,
When the North Wind howls, and the doors are shut, —

There is place and enough for the pains of prose ;

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS. 125

But whenever a scent from the whitethorn blows.
And the jasmine-stars at the casement climb.

And a Rosalind-face at the lattice shows,
Then hey ! — for the ripple of laughing rhyme !

When the brain gets dry as an empty nut,

When the reason stands on its squarest toes.
When the mind (like a beard) has a "formal cut," —

There is place and enough for the pains of prose ;

But whenever the May-blood stirs and glows.
And the young year draws to the " golden prime"

And Sir Romeo sticks in his ear a rose, —
Then hey ! — for the ripple of laughing rhyme !

In a theme where the thoughts have a pedant-strut.

In a changing quarrel of "Ayes" and "Noes,"
In a starched procession of "If" and "But," —

There is place and enough for the pains of prose ;

But whenever a soft glance softer grows
And the light hours dance to the trysting-time,

And the Secret is told "that no one knows," —
Then hey! — for the ripple of laughing rhyme !

ENVOY.

In the work-a-day world, — for its needs and woes.
There is place and enough for the pains of prose ;
But whenever the May-bells clash and chime,
Then hey ! — for the ripple of laughing rhyme I

It seems to me that in these poems Mr. Dobson
proves that the rondel at its best and the ballade
at its finest, belong to the poetry of feeling and

126 PEN AND INK.

not to the poetry of ingenuity. It seems to me,
also, that the poet has been helped by his restric-
tions. Here are cases where a faith in these
forms is justified by works. We may ask, fairly
enough, whether either of these poems would be
as good in any other shape. From the compres-
sion enforced by the rules, they have gained in
compactness, and therefore in swiftness. They
are, in Miltonic phrase, " woven close, both mat-
ter, form, and style."

It is to Mr. Dobson primarily and to his fellow-
workers that the credit is due of acclimatizing
these exotic metres in English literature. It is not
that he was absolutely the earliest to write them
in English — excepting only the ballade, of which
the 'Prodigals' was the first. Chaucer wrote
rondels, the elder Wyatt rondeaus, and Patrick
Carey, about 1651, was guilty of devotional trio-
lets ! But England was not then ready for the
conquest, and the forms crossed the Channel, like
the Norseman, just to set foot on land and then
away again. Even in France they had faded out of
sight. Moli^re speaks slightingly of ballades as
old-fashioned. Only in our own times, since M.
de Banville set the example, has the true form
been understood. Wyatt's rondeaus were printed
as though they were defective sonnets. Both

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

127

Longfellow and Bryant translated Clement Marot's
' Frere Lubin,' and neither of them knew it was a
ballade i double refrain. Nor is Rossetti's noble
rendering of Villon's famous 'Ballade of Dead
Ladies ' accurately formal. Mr. Lang, in his * Bal-
lads and Lyrics of Old France' (1872), was plainly
on the right track, but he failed then to reach the
goal. At last the time was ripe.

It was doubtless again due to Mr. Stedman's
warning that, although there is no work which
when well done secures a welcome as instant as
vers de societe, there is also *' none from which the
world so lightly turns upon the arrival of a new
favorite with a diflFerent note," — it was this wise
warning which led Mr. Dobson to vary his style,
not only with the revival of the French forms, but
also with fables and with a slight attempt at the
drama — in so far as the dainty and delicate
' Proverbs in Porcelain ' are substantial enough to
be called dramatic. Like John Gay and like the
late John G. Saxe, Mr. Dobson took to rhyming
fables after making a mark by more characteristic
verse. And Mr. Dobson's fables, good as they
are, and pertinent and brightsome as they needs
must be, since he wrote them, are like Gay's and
Saxe's in that they are not their author's best
work. The fault plainly is in the fable form.

128 PEN AND INK.

if Mr. Dobson's £ibles are not as entertaining as
his other poems ; at any rate, I am free to confess
that I like his other work better.

I have to confess, also, with great doubt and
diffidence, that the half-dozen little dialogues
called * Proverbs in Porcelain,' airy as they are
and exquisite, are less &ivorites with me than they
are with critics whose taste I cannot but think
finer than mine — Mr. Aldrich, for instance, and
Mr. Stedman. 1 am inclined to believe 1 like them
less because they assume a dramatic form without
warrant. The essence of the drama is action, and
in these beautiful and witty playlets there is but
the ghost of an action. I doubt not that I am
unfair to these dialogues, and that my attitude
toward them is that of the dramatic critic rather
than that of the critic of poetry pure and simple.
But that is their own fault for assuming a virtue
they have not. To counterbalance this harsh
treatment of the * Proverbs in Porcelain,' I must
declare that 1 take more pleasure in * A Virtuoso '
than do most of Mr. Dobson's admirers, and for
the same reason. 1 find in ' A Virtuoso ' all the
condensed compactness of the best stage dialogue,
where a phrase has to be stripped to run for its
life. To be read quickly by the fireside, * A Vir-
tuoso' may seem forced; but to be acted or

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

129

recited, it is just right. I see in this cold and cut-
ting poem, masterly in its synthesis of selfish
symptoms, a regard for theatrical perspective, and
a selection and a heightening of eflfect in accord-
ance with the needs of the stage, which I confess
I fail to find in the seemingly more dramatic
'Proverbs in Porcelain.' Most people, however,
liking Mr. Dobson mainly for playful tenderness
and tender pla)^ulness, dislike the marble hard-
ness of * A Virtuoso,' just as they are annoyed by
the tone of *A Love-letter,' one of the poet's
cleverest pieces. If Mr. Dobson yielded to the
likes and dislikes of his admirers he would soon
sink into sentimentality, and he would never dare
to write as funny as he can. There are readers
who are shocked and pained when they discover
the non-existence of ' Dorothy.'

After all, this is perhaps the highest compli-
ment that readers can pay the writer, when they
enter so heartily into his creations that they revolt
against any trick he may play upon them. And
in these days of haste without rest, it ill becomes
us to fling the first stone at an author who is
enamored of elusive perfection and who is willing
to spare no pains to give us his best and only his
best. He may be thankful that he is not as infer-
tile on the one hand as Waller, who was '*the

I^o PEN AND INK.

greater part of a summer correcting ten lines for
Her Grace of York's copy of Tasso," or as reckless
on the other hand as Martial, who disdained to
elaborate:

Turpe est difficile habere nugas
Et stultus labor est ineptiarum.

Not infrequently do we find Mr. Frederick
Locker and Mr. Dobson classed together as though
their work was fundamentally of the same kind.
The present writer has to plead guilty to the
charge of inadvertently and inaccurately linking
the two names in critical discussion. The like-
ness is accidental rather than essential, and the
hasty conjunction is due, perhaps, more to the fact
that they are friends, and that they both write what
has to be called vers de societe, than to any real like-
ness between their works. The fact is, the more
clearly we define, and the more precisely we limit
the phrase vers de societe, the more exactly do we
find the best and most characteristic of Mr. Locker's
poems agreeing with the definition and lying at
ease within the limitation ; while the best and
most characteristic of Mr. Dobson's poems would
be left outside. In his criticism of Praed's work
prefixed to the selection from his poems in the
fourth volume of Mr. Ward's ' English Poets ' Mr.

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

131

Dobson declares that ** as a writer of * society verse '
in its exacter sense, Praed was justly acknowl-
edged to be supreme/' and then he adds, **We
say 'exacter sense' because it has of late become
the fashion to apply this vague term in the vaguest
way possible so as to include almost all verse but
the highest and the lowest. This is manifestly a
mistake. Society verse as Praed understood it,
and as we understand it in Praed, treats almost ex-
clusively of the votum, timor, ira, voluptas (and
especially the voluptas) of that charmed circle of
uncertain limits known conventionally as ' good so-
ciety' — those latter-day Athenians who, in town
and country, spend their time in telling or hearing
some new thing, and whose graver and deeper
impulses are subordinated to a code of artificial
manners." Of these it is indisputable that Mr.
Locker is, as Praed was, the laureate-elect, and
that '* the narrow world in which they move is the
main haunt and region of his song." Mr. Locker
writes as one to the manner born, and nowhere
reveals the touch of the parvenu which betrayed
Praed now and again. In the exact sense of the
phrase, Mr. Locker, like Praed, is the poet of so-
ciety, which Mr. Dobson is not — because, for one
thing, we may doubt whether society is of quite so
much interest or importance or significance to him

1)2

PEN AND INK.

as to the author of 'London Lyrics.' The distinc-
tion is evasive, and has to be suggested rather than
said ; but it is none the less real and vital. It is,
perhaps, rather that Mr. Dobson is more a man
of letters, while Mr. Locker is more a man of
the world. Certainly Mr. Dobson has a more con-
sciously literary style than Mr. Locker, a style
less simple and less direct. Henri Monnier would
say that Mr. Dobson had more tnots d'auteur.
Admirable as is Mr. Dobson's verse, it has not
the condensed clearness nor the incisive vigor of
Mr. Locker's. One inclines to the opinion that
the author of * London Lyrics ' is willing to make
more sacrifices for vernacular terseness than the
author of 'Vignettes in Rhyme.' It is not that
Mr. Dobson is one of the poets who keep their
choicest wares locked in an inner safe guarded by
heavy bolts, and to whose wisdom no man may
help himself unless he has the mystic letters which
unlock the massive doors, but he is not quite will-
ing to be simple to the point of bareness as is Mr.
Locker, who wears his heart upon his sleeve. In
some things Mr. Locker is like Mr. du Maurier,
even in the little Gallic twist, while Mr. Dobson
is rather like Randolph Caldecott or our own
Abbey, with the quaint Englishry of whose style
Mr. Dobson's has much in common. Yet after say-

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

133

ing this I feel inclined to take it all back, for I recall
together 'This was the Pompadour's fan' and
'This is Gerty's glove' — and here it is Mr. Dob-
son who is brilliant and French and Mr. Locker
who is more simple in sentiment and more Eng-
lish. Yet again it is the worldly-minded Mr.
Locker who declares that

The world's as ugly, aye, as sin —
And nearly as delightful, —

a sentiment wholly foreign to Mr. Dobson's feel-
ings. This suggests that there is a certain town
stamp in the appropriately named 'London Lyrics'
not to be seen in ' Vignettes in Rhyme,' some of
which are vignettes from rural nature. But both
books are boons to be thankful for. Both are
havens of rest in days of depression ; both have a
joyousness most tonic and wholesome in these
days when the general tone of literature is gray ;
both preach the gospel of sanity, and both may
serve as antiseptics against sentimental decay.

Here occasion serves to say that each of these
masters of what Dr. Johnson, while declaring its
difficulty, called "easy verse," has set forth his
views of the art of writing vers de societL Mr.
Locker made his declaration of faith in the admi-
rable preface, all too brief, to the selection of vers

134

PEN AND INK.

de societe and vers d'occasion, which he published
in 1867 as 'Lyra Elegantiarum.' Mr. Dobson, at
the request of the present writer, drew up a code
for the composition of familiar verse. Here are
Mr. Dobson's 'Twelve Good Rules' :

I. Never be vulgar.

II. Avoid slang and puns.

III. Avoid inversions^

IV. Be sparing of long words.

V. Be colloquial^ but not commonplace.

VI. Choose the lightest and brightest of measures.
VII. Let the rhymes be frequent, but not forced.

VIII. Let them be rigorously exact to the ear.
IX. Be as witty as you like.

X. Be serious by accident.

XI. Be pathetic with the greatest discretion.

XII. Never ask if the writer of these rules has observed them
himself.

Mr. Dobson has not confined his labors in prose
to the canons of familiar verse. Although it is
as a poet that he is most widely known, his prose
has qualities of its own. Besides scattering maga-
zine articles, it includes half a dozen apt and alert
criticisms in Mr. Ward's * English Poets/ the final
chapter in Mr. Lang's little book on the * Library/
and prefaces to a fac-simile reprint of 'Robin-
son Crusoe/ and to the selection from Merrick's

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

135

poems, illustrated by Mr. Abbey with such abun-
dant sympathy and such delightful grace and
fancy. More important than these are the vol-
umes in which Mr. Dobson has given us selec-
tions from the best of the * Eighteenth Century
Essays,' and in which he has introduced and an-
notated the ' Fables ' of John Gay, the ' Poems '
and 'Vicar of Wakefield ' of Oliver Goldsmith, the
' Essays ' of Richard Steele, and the ' Barbier de
Seville' of Beaumarchais.

Still more important are the biographical sketches
of his favorite Hogarth, and of Bewick and his pu-
pils ; and the lives of Fielding, Steele, and Gold-
smith. It was to Mr. Dobson's biography that Mr.
Lowell referred when he unveiled Miss Margaret
Thomas's bust of Fielding in the Somersetshire
hall. In the course of his speech, as rich and elo-
quent as only his speeches are, Mr. Lowell said
that '*Mr. Austin Dobson has done, perhaps, as
true a service as one man of letters ever did to
another, by reducing what little is known of the
life of Fielding from chaos to coherence, by ridding
it of fable, by correcting and coordinating dates,
by cross-examining tradition till it stammeringly
confessed that it had no visible means of subsist-
ence, and has thus enabled us to get some authen-
tic glimpse of the man as he really was. Lessing

1^6 PfeN AND INK.

gives the title of ' Rescues ' to the essays in which
he strove to rehabilitate such authors as had been,
in his judgment, unjustly treated by their contem-
poraries, and Mr. Dobson's essay deserves to be
reckoned in the same category. He has rescued
the body of Fielding from beneath the swinish
hoofs which were trampling it as once they tram-
pled the Knight of La Mancha, whom Fielding so
heartily admired."

It has been well said that the study of practice
of verse is the best of trainings for the writing of
prose. Mr. Dobson's prose style is firm and pre-
cise ; it has no taint of the Corinthian luxuriance
which Mr. Matthew Arnold has castigated, or of
the passionate emphasis which passes for criti-
cism in some quarters. His ideal in prose writ-
ing is a style exact and cool and straightforward.
Sometimes the reader might like a little more
glow. It is not that his prose style is sapless,
for it has life ; it is rather that it is generally cut-
and-dried of malice prepense. He can write
prose with more color and more heat when he
chooses, as he who will may see in the par-
agraphs of the preface to Mr. Abbey's ' Herrick.'
In general, however, Mr. Dobson forgets that he
is a poet when he takes up his pen to write prose,
and he remembers only that he is an antiquary

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

137

and an investigator. In fact, his prose is the prose
of a scientific historian ; and Mr. Dobson has the
scientific virtues, — the passion for exactness, the
untiring patience in research, and the unwilling-
ness to set down anything which has not been
proved. If we apply De Quincey's classification,
we should declare that Mr. Dobson's poetry — like
all true poetry — belongs to the literature of
power, while his prose belongs to the literature
of knowledge.

It is to be remarked, also, that the poet some-
times remembers that he is an antiquary, also.
Here Mr. Dobson is not unlike Walter Scott, who
was also an antiquary-poet, with a strong love for
the past, and a gift for making dead figures start
to life at his bidding. Much of Mr. Dobson's
poetry is like his prose in that it is based on re-
search. His learning in the manners and customs
of past times is most minute. Especially rich is
his knowledge of the people and of the vocabulary
of the eighteenth century. This is the result of
indefatigable delving in the recofds of the past.
His acquaintance with the ways and words of the
contemporaries of Steele and of Fielding and of
Hogarth is as thorough as Lord Tennyson's knowl-
edge of botany, for instance ; and it is the proof
of as much minute observation. Although Mr.

1^8 P^ AND INK.

Dobson disdains all second-hand information, and
likes to verify facts for himself, he never lets his
learning burden his verse. That runs as freely
and as trippingly as though the seeking of the facts
on which it might be founded had not been a labor
of love, for which no toil was too great. The
' Ballad of Beau Brocade ' is a strong and simple
tale, seemingly calling for no special study ; but it
does not contain a single word not in actual use at
the time of the guide-book where it germinated,
and in print in the pages of the Gentleman's Mag-
a^ine of that reign. In like manner, in the noble
and virile ballade of the Armada, which the Virgin
Queen might have joyed to accept, there is no
single word not in Gervase Markham.

Writing always out of the fulness of knowl-
edge, there is nowhere anything amateurish, and
there is always a perfect certainty of touch. His
work — as Mr. W. C. Brownell has told us — is
''as natural an outgrowth as Lamb's." And he
is like Lamb in that capacity for taking infinite
pains which has been held the true trade-mark of
genius. He is like Lamb, again, in that he has
resolutely recognized his limitations. Ruler of his
own territory, he has carefully refrained from
crossing his neighbor's boundaries. Indeed, he is
as admirable an instance as one could wish of the

TWO LATTER-DAY LYRISTS.

139

exactness of Swift's dictum, ** It is an uncontrolled
truth that no man ever made an ill figure who
understood his own talents, nor a good one who
mistook them."

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.

NATIONAL hymn is one of the
things which cannot be made to
order. No man has ever yet sat him
down and taken up his pen and said,
"I will write a national h)mfin/' and
composed either words or music which a nation
was willing to take for its own. The making of
the song of the people is a happy accident, not to
be accomplished by taking thought. It must be
the result of fiery feeling long confined, and sud-
denly finding vent in burning words or moving
strains. Sometimes the heat and the pressure
of emotion have been fierce enough and intense
enough to call forth at once both words and
music, and to weld them together indissolubly
once and for all. Almost always the maker of
the song does not suspect the abiding value of his
work ; he has wrought unconsciously, moved by
a power within; he has written for immediate

X40

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.

141

relief to himself, and with no thought of fame or
the future ; he has builded better than he knew.
The great national lyric is the result of the con-
junction of the hour and the man. Monarchs can-
not command it, and even poets are often powerless
to achieve it. No one of the great national hymns
has been written by a great poet. But for his
single immortal lyric, neither the author of the
' Marseillaise ' nor the author of the * Wacht am
Rhein ' would have his line in the biographical dic-
tionaries. But when a song has once taken root
in the hearts of a people, time itself is powerless
against it. The flat and feeble 'Partant pour la
Syrie,' which a filial flat made the hymn of im-
perial France, had to give way to the strong and
virile notes of the 'Marseillaise,' when need was
to arouse the martial spirit of the French in 1 870.
The noble measures of ' God Save the King,' as
simple and dignified a national hymn as any coun-
try can boast, lift up the hearts of the English
people ; and the brisk tune of the * British Grena-
diers ' has swept away many a man into the ranks
of the recruiting regiment. The English are rich
in war tunes ; and the pathetic * Girl I left behind
me' encourages and sustains both those who go to
the front and those who remain at home. Here
in the United States we have no 'Marseillaise,' no

142

PEN AND INK.

*God Save the King/ no ' Wacht am Rhein'; we
have but ' Yankee Doodle ' and the ' Star-spangled
Banner/ More than one enterprising poet, and
more than one aspiring musician, has volunteered
to take the contract to supply the deficiency; as
yet no one has succeeded. 'Yankee Doodle' we
got during the Revolution, and the ' Star-spangled
Banner ' was the gift of the War of 1 8 1 2 ; from the
Civil War we have received at least two war songs
which, as war songs simply, are stronger and
finer than either of these — 'John Brown's Body'
and 'Marching Through Georgia.'

Of the lyrical outburst which the war called forth
but little trace is now to be detected in literature
except by special students. In most cases neither
words nor music have had vitality enough to sur-
vive a quarter of a century. Chiefly, indeed, two
things only survive, one Southern and the other
Northern ; one a war-cry in verse, the other a mar-
tial tune : one is the lyric ' My Maryland,' and the
other is the marching song 'John Brown's Body.'
The origin and development of the fatter, the rude
chant to which a million of the soldiers of the
Union kept time, is uncertain and involved in dis-
pute. The history of the former may be declared
exactly, and by the courtesy of those who did
the deed — for the making of a war song is of a

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.

truth a deed at arms — I am enabled to state fully
the circumstances under which it was written, set
to music, and first sung before the soldiers of the
South.

' My Maryland ' was written by Mr. James R.
Randall, a native of Baltimore, and now residing
in Augusta, Georgia. The poet was a professor
of English literature and the classics in Poydras
College at Pointe G)upee, on the Fausse Riviere,
in Louisiana, about seven miles from the Missis-
sippi; and there in April, 1861, he read in the
New Orleans Delta the news of the attack on the
Massachusetts troops as they passed through Bal-
timore. *' This account excited me greatly," Mr.
Randall wrote in answer to my request for infor-
mation ; 'M had long been absent from my native
city, and the startling event there inflamed my
mind. That night 1 could not sleep, for my
nerves were all unstrung, and I could not dismiss
what I had read in the paper from my mind.
About midnight I rose, lit a candle, and went to
my desk. Some powerful spirit appeared to pos-
sess me, and almost involuntarily I proceeded to
write the song of * My Maryland.' I remember
that the idea appeared to first take shape as music
in the brain — some wild air that 1 cannot now re-
call. The whole poem was dashed off rapidly

144

PEN AND INK.

when once begun. It was not composed in cold
blood, but under what may be called a conflagration
of the senses, if not an inspiration of the intellect.
I was stirred to a desire for some way linking my
name with that of my native State, if not ' with
my land's language.' But I never expected to do
this with one single, supreme effort, and no one
was more surprised than I was at the widespread
and instantaneous popularity of the lyric 1 had been
so strangely stimulated to write." Mr. Randall
read the poem the next morning to the college boys,
and at their suggestion sent it to the Deltas in which
it was first printed, and from which it was copied
into nearly every Southern journal. "I did not
concern myself much about it, but very soon,
from all parts of the country, there was borne to
me, in my remote place of residence, evidence
that I had made a great hit, and that, whatever
might be the fate of the Confederacy, the song
would survive it."

Published in the last days of April, 1861, when
every eye was fixed on the border States, the stir-
ring stanzas pJF the Tyrtaean bard appeared in the
very nick of time. There is often a feeling afloat
in the minds of men, undefined and vague for
want of one to give it form, and held in solution,
as it were, until a chance word dropped in the ear

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.

of a poet suddenly crystallizes this feeling into
song, in which all may see clearly and sharply re-
flected what in their own thought was shapeless
and hazy. It was Mr. Randall's good fortune to
be the instrument through which the South spoke.
By a natural reaction his burning lines helped to
fire the Southern heart. To do their work well,
his words needed to be wedded to music. Unlike
the authors of the ' Star-spangled Banner ' and the
'Marseillaise,' the author of *My Maryland' had
not written it to fit a tune already familiar. It
was left for a lady of Baltimore to lend the lyric
the musical wings it needed to enable it to reach
every camp-fire of the Southern armies. To tl^e
courtesy of this lady, then Miss Hetty Gary, and
now the wife of Professor H. Newell Martin, of
Johns Hopkins University, I am indebted for a pict-
uresque description of the marriage of the words
to the music, and of the first singing of the song
before the Southern troops.

The house of Mrs. Martin's father was the
headquarters for the Southern sympathizers of Bal-
timore. Correspondence, money, clothing, sup-
plies of all kinds went thence through the lines to
the young men of the city who had joined the
Confederate army. ** The enthusiasm of the girls
who worked and of the ' boys ' who watched for

146 . PEN AND INK.

their chance to slip through the lines to Dixie's land
found vent and inspiration in such patriotic songs
as could be made or adapted to suit our needs.
The glee club was to hold its meeting in our parlors
one evening early in June, and my sister. Miss
Jenny Gary, being the only musical member of the
family, had charge of the programme on the occasion .
With a school-girl's eagerness to score a success,
she resolved to secure some new and ardent ex-
pression of feelings that by this time were wrought
up to the point of explosion. In vain she searched
through her stock of songs and airs — nothing
seemed intense enough to suit her. Aroused by
her tone of despair, I came to the rescue with the
suggestion that she should adapt the words of
'Maryland, my Maryland,' which had been con-
stantly on my lips since the appearance of the lyric
a few days before in the South. I produced the
paper and began declaiming the verses. 'Lauriger
Horatius,' she exclaimed, and in a flash the immortal
song found voice in the stirring air so perfectly
adapted to it. That night, when her contralto voice
rang out the stanzas, the refrain rolled forth from
every throat present without pause or preparation ;
and the enthusiasm communicated itself with such
effect to a crowd assembled beneath our open win-
dows as to endanger seriously the liberties of the
party."

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.

147

'Lauriger Horatius' has long been a favorite
college song, and it had been introduced into the
Qry household by Mr. Burton N. Harrison, then a
Yale student. The air to which it is sung is used
also for a lovely German lyric, 'Tannenbaum, O
Tannenbaum,' which Longfellow has translated * O ,
Hemlock Tree.' The transmigration of tunes is tod
large and fertile a subject for me to do more here
than refer to it. The taking of the air of a jovial
college song to use as the setting of a fiery war-
lyric may seem strange and curious, but only to
those who are not familiar with the adventures
and transformations a tune is often made to under-
go. Hopkinson's 'Hail Columbia!' for example,
was written to the tune of the 'President's March,'
just as Mrs. Howe's 'Battle Hymn of the Republic'
was written to 'John Brown's Body.' The ' Wear-
ing of the Green,' of the Irishman, is sung to the
same air as the ' Benny Havens, O ! ' of the West-
Pointer. The 'Star-spangled Banner' has to make
shift with the second-hand music of ' Anacreon in
Heaven,' while our other national air, 'Yankee
Doodle,' uses over the notes of an old English
nursery rhyme, 'Lucy Locket,' once a personal
lampoon in the days of the 'Beggars' Opera,' and
now surviving in the ' Baby's Opera ' of Mr. Walter
Crane. 'My Country, 'tis of Thee,' is set to the

148 PEN AND INK.

truly British tune of ' God Save the King,' the origin
of which is doubtful, as it is claimed by the French
and the Germans as well as the English. In the
hour of battle a war-tune is subject to the right
of capture, and, like the cannon taken from the
enemy, it is turned against its maker.

To return to 'My Maryland': — a few weeks
after the welding of the words and the music, Mrs.
Martin, with her husband and sister, went through
the lines, convoying several trunks full of military
clothing, and wearing concealed about her person
a flag bearing the arms of Maryland, a gift from the
ladies of Baltimore to the Maryland troops in the
Confederate army. In consequence of reports
which were borne back to the Union authorities the
ladies were forbidden to return. "We were liv-
ing," so Mrs. Martin writes me, "in Virginia in
exile, when, shortly after the battle of Manassas,
General Beauregard, hearing of our labors and
sufferings in behalf of the Marylanders who had
already done such gallant service in his command,
invited us to visit them at his headquarters near
Fairfax Court House, sending a pass and an escort
for us, and the friends by whom we should be
accompanied. Our party encamped the first night
in tents prepared for us at Manassas, with my
kinsman. Captain Sterrell, who was in charge of the

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.

149

fortifications there. We were serenaded by the
famous Washington Artillery of New Orleans,
aided by all the fine voices y/^ithin reach. Captain
Sterrell expressed our thanks, and asked if there
were any service we might render in return.
'Let us hear a woman's voice,' was the cry which
arose in response. And, standing in the tent-
door, under cover of the darkness, my sister sang
*My Maryland 1 ' This, I believe, was the birth of
the song in the army. The refrain was speedily
caught up and tossed back to us from hundreds
of rebel throats. As the last notes died away there
surged forth from the gathering throng a wild
shout — ' We will break her chains 1 She sbaU be
be free ! . She sbaU be free ! Three cheers and a
tiger for Maryland ! ' And they were given with
a will. There was not a dry eye in the tent, and,
we were told the next day, not a cap with a rim on
it in camp. Nothing could have kept Mr. Randall's
verses from living and growing into a power. To
us fell the happy chance of first giving them voice.
In a few weeks ' My Maryland ! ' had found its way
to the hearts of our whole people, and become a
great national song."

I wish 1 could call as charming and as striking a
witness to set forth the origin of 'John Brown's
Body.' The genesis of both words and music is

1 50 PEN AND INK.

obscure and involved. The raw facts of historical
criticism — names, places, dates — are deficient.
The martial hymn has been called a spontaneous
generation of the uprising of the North — a self-
made song, which sang itself into being of its own
accord. Some have treated it as a sudden evolu-
tion from the inner consciousness of the early
soldiers all aglow with free-soil enthusiasm ; and
these speak of it as springing, like Minerva from
the head of Jove, full armed and mature. Others
have more happily likened it to Topsy, in that it
never was born, it growed ; and this latter theory
has the support of the facts as far as they can be
disentangled from a maze of fiction and legend.
A tentative and conjectural reconstruction of the
story of the song is all I dare venture upon ; and I
stand corrected in anticipation.

The Latter-day Saints of 1843 had a camp-
meeting song referring to the Second Advent,
* Say, brothers, will you meet us ? ' Whence this
tune came, and whether or not it is a native negro
air, I have been wholly unable to discover. I can
be certain only of its later popularity. Within
fifteen years it spread over the country. Mr. C.
G. Leland says that the song "was a great favorite
with John Brown " and that "it was sung with an
improvised variation adapted to John Brown him-

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.

151

self by those who were in his funeral as it passed
through the streets of New-York."

John Brown was hanged in December, 1859.
A little more than a year later the report of the
shot against the flag at Sumter rang through all
the States and startled the blood of every man in
the nation. Then suddenly the new song of
' John Brown's Body ' sprang into being. It was
the song of the hour. There was a special taunt
to the South in the use of the name of the martyr
of abolition, while to the North that name was as
a slogan. As the poet — a prophet again, for
once — had written when John Brown was yet
alive, though condemned to death:

But, Virginians, don't do it ! for I tell you that the flagon.
Filled with blood of old Brown's offspring, was first poured
by Southern hands ;
And each drop from old Brown's life-veins, like the red gore
of the dragon,
May spring up a vengeful fury, hissing through your slave-
worn lands!

And old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
May trouble you more than ever, when you've nailed his
coffin down !

The putting together of the rude version first
sung in the rising heat of the war fever, the fitting

152

PEN AND INK.

of plain rough words to the tune of * Say, brothers,
will you meet us?' — the tune of which was
made more marked, and modified to a march —
seems to have been done by a little knot of men
in the second battalion, the Tigers, a Massachu-
setts command quartered at Fort Warren, in Bos-
ton Harbor, in April, 1861 , just at the time when
'My Maryland' was getting itself sung at the
South. A writer in the Boston Herald says that
'*the manner in which ' the old tune' was taken
to Fort Warren was simple. Two members of
the Tigers were present at a camp-meeting service
in a small town in New Hampshire during the fall
preceding the occupancy of the fort," and they
learned the air there. Their names were Purring-
ton and Brown ; and when the Tigers went to
the fort and joined the 1 2th regiment, these two
vocalists took unto themselves two more, Edgerly
and Greenleaf — the latter a professional musician.
By this quartet the rudimentary John Brown song
seems to have been evolved out of the old camp-
meeting lyric. Beyond all question it was the
Webster regiment which first adopted 'John
Brown's Body ' as a marching song. The soldiers
of this regiment sang it as they marched down
Broadway, in New-York, July 24, 1861, on their
way from Boston to the front. They sang it

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. i 53

incessantly until August, 1862, when Colonel
Webster died, and when the tune had been taken
up by the nation at large and hundreds of thou-
sands of soldiers were marching forward to the
fight with the name of John Brown on their lips.

There was a majestic simplicity in the rhythm
like the beating of mighty hammers. In the begin-
ning the words were bare to the verge of barren-
ness. There was no lack of poets to fill them out.
Henry Howard Brownell, the singer of the 'Bay
Fight ' and the ' River Fight,' skilfully utilized the ac-
cepted lines, which he enriched with a deeper mean-
ing. Then Mrs. Howe wrote her 'Battle Hymn of
the Republic,' perhaps the most resonant and ele-
vated of the poems of American patriotism. Its
religious fervor was in consonance with the camp-
meeting origin of the song, and even more fully
with the intense feeling of the time. Of late the
air has been taken again by Mr. William Morris,
poet and socialist, decorator and reformer, as the
one to which shall be sung his eloquent and stir-
.ring 'March of the Workers.'

Curiously enough, the history of 'Dixie' is not
at all unlike the history of 'John Brown's Body.'
'Dixie' was composed in 1859, ^Y ^^- ^^^ ^'
Emmett, as a "walk-around" for Bryant's min-
strels, then performing at Mechanics' Hall in New-

154

PEN AND INK.

York. Mr. Emmett had travelled with circuses,
and had heard the performers refer to the States
south of Mason and Dixon's line as '* Dixie's land,"
wishing themselves there as soon as the Northern
climate began to be too severe for those who live
in tents like the Arabs. It was on this expression
of Northern circus performers,

I wish 1 was in Dixiei

that Mr. Emmett constructed his song. The
' ' walk-around " hit the taste of the New-York play-
going public, and it was adopted at once by various
bands of wandering minstrels, who sang and danced
it in all parts of the Union. In the fall of i860
Mrs. John Wood sang it in New Orleans in John
Brougham's burlesque of 'Pocahontas,' and in
New Orleans it took root. Without any authority
from the composer, a New Orleans publisher had
the air harmonized and arranged, and he issued it
with words embodying the strong Southern feel-
ing of the chief city of Louisiana. As from Boston
'John Brown's Body' spread through the North,
so from New Orleans * Dixie' spread through the
South ; and as Northern poets strove to find fit
words for the one, so Southern poets wrote fiery
lines to fill the measures of the other. Of the sets
of verse written to 'Dixie,' the best, perhaps, is

THE SONGS OF THE ClVlLsM^. -♦ ^' f^i^

that by General Albert Pike, of Arkansas, who
happens, by a fortuitous chance, to have been
a native of Vermont. With Republican words
'Dixie' had been used as a campaign song in
i860; and it was perhaps some vague remem-
brance of this which prompted Lincoln to have the
air played by a band in Washington in 1865, a
short time after the surrender at Appomattox,
remarking that as we had captured the rebel army
we had captured also the rebel tune.

From New Orleans also came another of the
songs of the South, the ' Bonnie Blue Flag.' Mr.
Randall writes me that * Dixie' and the 'Bonnie
Blue Flag' were the most popular of Southern
songs. Like ' Dixie,' the ' Bonnie Blue Flag' came
from the theatre. The tune is an old Hibernian
melody, the 'Irish Jaunting Car.' The earliest
words were written by an Irish comedian, Harry
McCarthy, and the song was first sung by his
sister, Miss Marion McCarthy, at the Varieties
Theatre, in 186 1. It was published by Mr. A. E.
Blackmar, who wrote to a friend of mine that Gen-
eral Butler " made it very profitable by fining every
man, woman, or child who sang, whistled, or
played it on any instrument, $25," besides arrest-
ing the publisher, destroying the sheet music, and
fining him $500. Later a stirring lyric, to be sung

I 56 PEN AND INK.

to this air, was written by Miss Annie Chambers
Ketcham.

In Louisiana, of course, there was also the 'Mar-
seillaise.' "The Creoles of New Orleans," Mr.
Cable has written me, ''followed close by the An-
glo-Americans of their town, took up the 'Mar-
seillaise' with great enthusiasm, as they have
always done whenever a war spirit was up. They
did it when the British invaded Louisiana in 181 4.
It was good enough as it stood ; they made no new
adaptations of it, but sang it in French and English
(1 speak of 1861), 'dry so,' as the Southern rustics
say. ' Dixie' started with the first mutter of war
thunder. ... I think the same is true of
'Lorena.' This doleful old ditty started at the
start, and never stopped till the last musket was
stacked and the last camp-fire cold. It was, by all
odds, the song nearest the Confederate soldier's
heart. It was the 'Annie Laurie' of the Confed-
erate trenches."

Nowadays it is not a little difficult to detect in
the rather mushy sentimentality of the words
of 'Lorena,' or in the lugubrious wail of its music,
any qualities which might account for the affection
it was held in. But the vagaries of popular taste are
inscrutable. Dr. Palmer's vigorous lyric, 'Stone-
wall Jackson's Way,' written within sound of the

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.

157

cannonading at Antietam, was so little sung that
Mr. Randall thought it had not been set to music.
I have, however, succeeded in discovering two airs
to which it was sung — one published by Mr. Black-
mar, and the other the familiar * Duda, duda, day.'
The Northern equivalent of 'Lorena' is to be
sought among the songs which made a lyric address
to * Mother/ and of which 'Just before the Battle,
Mother,' may be taken as a type. ' Mother, I've
G)me Home to Die' was sung with feeling and
with humor by many a gallant fellow who is now
gathered at the bivouac of the dead. Mr. George
F. Root, of Chicago, was both the author and com-
poser of 'Just before the Battle, Mother,' as he was
also of the * Battle Cry of Freedom,' and of * Tramp,
Tramp, Tramp; the Boys are Marching.' It is
difficult to say which one of these three songs was
the most popular; there was a touch of realistic
pathos in 'Just before the Battle, Mother,' which
brought the simple and unpretending words home
to the hearts of the men who had girded on the
sword and shouldered the musket. Yet captivity
was not seldom more bitter to bear than death it-
self, and this gave point to the lament of the soldier
who sat in his "prison cell" and heard the tramp,
tramp, tramp of the marching boys. Probably,
however, the first favorite with the soldiers in the

1 58 PEN AND INK.

field, and certainly the song of Mr. Root's which
has the best chance of surviving, is the * Battle Cry
of Freedom/ It was often ordered to be sung as
the men marched into action. More than once its
strains arose on the battle-field and made obedience
more easy to the lyric command to rally round the
flag. With the pleasant humor which never deserts
the American, even in the hard tussle of war, the
gentle lines of ' Mary had a Little Lamb ' were fitted
snugly to the tune ; and many a regiment short-
ened a weary march or went gayly into action,
singing,

Mary had a little lamb,

Its fleece was white as snow,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom ;

And everywhere that Mary went

The lamb was sure to go.
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom.

Now the song is sure of immortality, for it has
become a part of those elective studies which are
the chief gains of the college curriculum. At the
hands of the American college boys, * Rally round
the Flag' can get a renewed lease of life for
twenty-one years more — or forever. A boy is
your true conservative ; he is the genuine guardian
of ancient rites and customs, old rhymes and
songs ; he has the fullest reverence for age — if so
be it is not incarnated in a Prof, or the Prex.

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR.

»59

Lowell, in declaring the antiquity of the New World,
says thait ' * we have also in America things amaz-
ingly old, as our boys, for example." And the
borrowing of the ' Battle Cry of Freedom ' by the
colleges is only the fair exchange which is no rob-
bery; for, as we have seen, it was from the col^.
lege that the air of * Lauriger Horatius * was taken
to speed the heated stanzas of ' My Maryland/
Another college song, — if the digression may be
pardoned, — the ' Upidee-Upida,' to which we sa
wickedly sing the quatrains of Longfellow's ' Ex-
celsior/ 1 have heard rising sonorously from the
throats of a stalwart regiment of German Landwebr
in the summer of 1 870, as they were on their way
to the French frontier — and to Paris.

Although they came at the beginning of the
war, 'John Brown's Body' and the ' Battle Cry of
Freedom' have been sung scarcely more often
than 'Marching through Georgia,' which could not
have come into being until near the end of the fight.
Now that the war has been over for twenty years
and more, and the veteran has no military duty
more harassing than fighting his battles o'er,
' Marching through Georgia ' has become the song
dearest to his heart. The swinging rhythm of the
tune and the homely directness of the words gave
the song an instant popularity, increased by the

l6o PEN AND INK.

fact that it commemorated the most striking epi-
sode of the war, the march to the sea. * Marching
through Georgia' was written and composed by
the late Henry C. Work. In his history of * Music
in America/ Professor Ritter refers to Stephen C.
Foster, the composer of ' Old Folks at Home, 'as one
who " said naively and gently what he had to say,
without false pretension or bombastic phrases";
and this praise may be applied also to Work, who
had not a little of the folk-flavor which gives quality
to Foster. Like Foster, Work was fond of reflect-
ing the rude negro rhythms ; and some of his best
songs seem like actual echoes from the cotton-
field and levee. * Wake, Nicodemus,' * Kingdom
Coming,' and * Babylon is Fallen ' have this savor
of the soil, — sophisticated, it maybe, and yet pun-
gent and captivating. 1 have heard it suggested
that 'Marching through Georgia' was founded
on a negro air, and also that it is a reminiscence
of a bit of the ' Rataplan ' of the ' Huguenots.' It
is possible that there is a little truth at the bottom
of both of these stories. The * Huguenots ' was
frequently performed at the New Orleans Opera
House before the war, and many a slave must
have heard his young mistress singing and playing
selections from Meyerbeer's music ; and it may be
that Work, in turn, overheard some negro's ram-

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. i6l

bling recollection of the * Rataplan/ This is idle
conjecture, however; the tune of 'Marching
through Georgia ' is fresh and spirited ; and it bids
fair — with 'John Brown's Body' — to be the chief
legacy of the war. Work was also the author
and composer of two other songs which had their
day, 'Drafted into the Army' and 'Brave Boys are
They.' The latter has had the honor of being
sung of late by Mr. Cable, who heard first at a
Southern camp-fire from the lips of a comrade the
chorus of Northern origin, equally apt in its appli-
cation in those troublous times to the homes on
either side of Mason and Dixon's line :

Brave boys are they,

Gone at their country's call ;
And yet — and yet we cannot forget

That many brave boys must fall.

It was in the dark days of 1862, just after Lin-
coln had issued the proclamation asking for three
hundred thousand volunteers to fill up the stricken
ranks of the army and to carry out the cry which
urged it * On to Richmond,' that Mr. John S. Gib-
bons wrote

We are coming, Father Abraham,
Three hundred thousand more,

a lyric which contributed not a little to the bring-

1 62 PEN AND INK.

ing about of the uprising it declared. The author
of this ringing call to arms was a member of the
Society of Friends, — in other words, a Hicksite
Quaker, — ** with a reasonable leaning, however,
toward wrath in cases of emergency," as his son-
in-law, Mr. James H. Morse, neatly put it, in a
recent letter to me. He joined the abolition
movement in 1830, when he was barely twenty
years old. Three years later he married a daugh-
ter of Isaac T. Hopper, the Quaker philanthropist.
For a short time he was one of the editors of the
Anti-Slcpoery Standard, and like many of the
Quakers of his school, he was always ardent in
the cause of negro freedom. At the outbreak of
the war, Mrs. Gibbons and her eldest daughter
went to the front, and they served in the hospitals
until the end. While they w^re away the riots
of '63 occurred, and their house in New-York was
sacked, Mr. Gibbons and the two younger daugh-
ters taking refuge with relatives in the house next
door but one, and thence over the roofs to Eighth
Avenue, where Mr. Joseph H. Choate had a car-
riage in waiting for them. The house was sin-
gled out for this attention because it had been
illuminated when the Emancipation Proclamation
was issued, — on which occasion it had been
daubed and defiled with coal tar.

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. . 163

At the request of Mr. Morse, Mr. Gibbons has
put on paper an account of the circumstances
under which he wrote * We are coming, Father
Abraham,' and from this I am privileged to
quote. It must be premised that Mr. Gibbons,
although he had written verse, — as who has
not? — was best known as a writer on economic
topics : he has published two books about bank-
ing and he was for a while the financial editor of
the Evening Post. In 1862, after Lincoln had
issued his call for volunteers, Mr. Gibbons used to
take long walks alone, often talking to himself.
** I began to con over a song," he writes. '* The
words seemed to fall into ranks and files, and to
come with a measured step. Directly would
come along a company of soldiers with fife and
drum, and that helped the matter amazingly. I
began to keep step myself — three hun-dred thou-
sand more. It was very natural to answer the
President's call — we are coming — and to prefix
the term father. Then the line would follow.

We are coming, Father Abraham,

and nothing was more natural than the number
of soldiers wanted.

Three hundred thousand more.
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand

more.

1 64 PEN AND INK.

** Where from ? Shore is the rhyme wanted."
Just then Mr. Gibbons met '*a western regi-
ment — from Minnesota, it was — and the line
came at once in full.

From Mississippi's winding stream, and from New Eng-
land's shore.

*' Two lines in full • • . Then followed — how
naturally I

We leave our ploughs and workshops, our wives and children

dear,
With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear.

"And so it went on, word by word, line by
line, until the whole song was made.'* When it
was written, only one slight verbal alteration was
made, and then it was printed in the Evening Post
of July 1 6, 1862. It is interesting to note that it
was in the Evening Post of May 29, 18 19, nearly
half a century before, that another famous patriotic
poem had first been published — Drake's * Ameri-
can Flag.' Mr. Gibbons's song appeared anony-
mously and its authorship was ascribed at once to
Bryant, who was then the editor of the Evening
Post. At a large meeting in Boston, held the
evening after it had appeared, it was read by Josiah
Quincy as *'the latest poem written by Mr. Wm.
C. Bryant."

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR, 165

One of the Hutchinson family set it to music,
and they sang it with great effect. A common
friend told Jesse Hutchinson that the song was
not by Bryant but by Mr. Gibbons. ' * What — our
old friend Gibbons? " he asked in reply. It is re-
ported that when he was assured that his old
friend Gibbons was the real author of the song,
Jesse Hutchinson hesitated thoughtfully for a mo-
ment and then said, *' Well, we'll keep the name
of Bryant, as we've got it. He's better known
than Gibbons." The stirring song was set to
music by several other composers, most of whom
probably supposed that it was Bryant's. I find in
a stray newspaper cutting an account of Lincoln's
coming down to the Red Room of the White
House one morning in the summer of 1864, to
listen with bowed head and patient, pensive eyes
while one of a party of visitors sang

We are comings Father Abraham, three hundred thousand
more.

A rattling good war song which has kept its
hold on the ears of the people is * When Johnny
comes Marching Home,' published in 1863 by
"Louis Lambert." Behind this pseudonym was
hidden Mr. P. S. Gilmore, the projector of the
Boston ** Peace Jubilee," and the composer after-

l66 PEN AND INK.

ward of a more ambitious national hymn, which
has hitherto failed to attain the popularity of its
unpretending predecessor with the rousing refrain.
It is related that after the performance of ' Glory to
God on High/ from Mozart's Twelfth Mass, on
the first day of the Jubilee, an old soldier of the
Webster regiment took occasion to shake hands
with Mr. Gilmore and to proffer his congratula-
tions on the success of the undertaking, adding
that for his part what he had liked best was the
piece called the * Twelfth Massachusetts.'

At the Boston Peace Jubilee, and again at the
Centennial Exhibition, there was opportunity for
the adequate and serious treatment of the war
tunes which have survived the welter and turmoil
of the actual struggle ; but the occasion was not im-
proved. Little more has been done than a chance
arrangement of airs in the clap-trap manner of
Jullien's * British Army Quadrilles/ The * Cen-
tennial March ' which Richard Wagner wrote for
us was the work of a master, no doubt, but it was
perfunctory, and hopelessly inferior to his resplen-
dent * Kaiser March.' The German composer had
not touch of the American people, and as he did not
know what was in our hearts, we had no right to
hope that he should give it expression. The time
is now ripe for the musician who shall richly and

THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 167

amply develop with sustained and sonorous dig-
nity the few simple airs which represent and
recall to the people of these United States the
emotions, the doubts, the dangers, the joys, the
sorrows, the harassing anxieties, and the final
triumph of the four long years of bitter strife. The
composer who will take 'John Brown's Body'
and ' Marching through Georgia,' and such other
of our war tunes as may be found worthy, and
who shall do unto them as the still living Hunga-
rian and Scandinavian composers have done to
the folk-songs of their native land, need not hesi-
tate from poverty of material or from fear of the
lack of a responsive audience. The first American
composer who shall turn these war tunes into
mighty music to commemorate the events which
called them forth, will of a certainty have his re-
ward.

ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN BY THOSE WHO
DO NOT SPEAK FRENCH.

HAVE always thought it a great pity
that Thackeray did not leave us a
Roundabout Paper ' On the French
spoken by those who do not speak
French.' No one is so competent and
so capable of doing justice to the topic as Thack-
eray. It is a subject which seems most suitable
for the author of the ' Book of Snobs ' ; for, above
all things, is there snobbishness in the alfectation
of being on speaking terms with the French lan-
guage, when in very truth it barely returns your
bow. The title of the proposed paper is perhaps
a little long ; but there is wealth enough of ma-
terial to warrant an article as ample as the name
may promise. Indeed, the title is almost too com-
prehensive, for it includes the blunders of those
who know they cannot speak French, but never-
theless try to make themselves understood, and
the errors of those who insist in thinking that they

ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN. 169

can speak French in spite of oral testimony which
convinces every one else. And it would also in-
clude certain extraordinary phrases which pass for
French in ordinary English speech.

The first of these classes is the French of Strat-
ford-at-Bow, the French of the Hoosier or the
Cockney, the French of those who affectionately
refer to the capital of France as * ' Parry " — as
though it were an Arctic explorer ; there are even
those, 1 am told, who descend so low as '* Parree,"
because, mayhap, like Mrs. General Gilfiory,
they ** have been so long abroad." At this type
the French themselves never tire of poking fun. In
caricature, pictorial or dramatic, it is an endless
source of amusement; and the seeker for illustra-
tive anecdote has an abundance to choose from.
One of the most amusing is a dialogue between a
Cockney passenger, who has full belief in the purity
of his French, and the conductor of a diligence.
The Cockney begins by calling the coachman a
pig — and, indeed, cocber is not so very unlike
cocbon. Then he addresses himself to the con-
ductor :

'* Etes-vous le diligence ? "

'* Non, m'sieur, je suis le conducteur."

'* C'est tout le meme chose. Donnez-moa doux
places dans votre interieur."

lyo

PEN AND INK.

Unable to get inside seats, he tries to mount to
the roof. Unfortunately, he slips and falls heavily
to the ground. The conductor runs to his assist-
ance. ^.

* * Avez-vous d^ mal, m'sieur ? "

' ' No, mba pas de malle, moa only a portman-
teau.''

Here the blunderer was English ; but in another
narrative it seems to me that the fault lies rather
with the Frenchman, An Anglo-Saxon was trav-
elling in the south of France, and once, as the train
into the station drew, he asked an attendant :

* * Est-ce que c'est iji Hyeres ? "
Unfortunately, he pronounced the , name of

the town as though it were written bier ; and so
he received the puzzled answer :

'* Mais non, m'sieur, c'est ifi aujourd'hui."
Of honest blundering in the use of the foreign
tongue, and of frank ignorance, there is no lack of
anecdotes. The young lady brought up in an
establishment where ' * French is the language of
the school " is not always above asking ** qu'elle
est la matiere?" and telling you that *' il n'y a pas
de depeche," when she means to inquire what
may be the matter, and to inform you that there is
no hurry. I believe that Americans pick up French
more quickly than do the English; but when

ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN. 171

one seeks for typical blunders of beginners and of
pretenders, honors are easy. It was a young Amer-
ican who asked for ' ' cafe au lait without any
milk/' and who alluded to ** gendre pictures," and
who described a dress as ** trimmed all down the
front with bouillon fringe," But internal evidence
compels me to assign to an Englishman the part
of the protagonist in two merry jests of this sort.
In one he says, ** Je veuxun poitrine de calejons,"
and it is discovered that he had dug out from the
dictionary this translation of '* chest of drawers.'
In the other the scene is laid on a channel steamer,
and as this thrusts its nose into the chopping sea,
an English bagman calls frantically for the steward,
adding, "Jesens mauvais. Oil est ma naissance?"
I have been told that he supposed he was saying
the French equivalent for " 1 feel bad. Where is
my berth ? "

An American again, and a rigid Republican, is
the hero of another anecdote. He met the Ger-
man king who has won fame in the study of
Dante, and he told his majesty that he was pleased
to meet him. He parted from the royal scholar
with the remark, *' Je vous honore pas comme roi
mais comme ecolier ! " It is a strange sight to see
two Anglo-Saxon strangers meet and * * terrify each
other into mutual unintelligibility with that lingtia

^ I

172

PEN AND INK.

franca of the English-speaking traveller, which is
supposed to bear some remote affinity to the French
language, of which both parties are as ignorant as
an American ambassador " — as Mr. Lowell wrote
in his 'Fireside Travels,' not foreseeing the time
when the scholar in politics should be minister at
Madrid and London.

When Dr. Holmes acted as a medium and mate-
rialized the sturdy spectre of Dr. Johnson, the ear-
lier autocrat declared to the later that ' * to trifle
with the vocabulary, which is the vehicle of social
intercourse, is to tamper with the currency of
human intelligence " ; and the orotund presence
added the characteristic sentiment that in his
opinion '* he who would violate the sanctities of
his mother-tongue would invade the recesses of
the paternal till without remorse, and repeat the
banquet of Saturn without indigestion." From
the context we learn that just then the spirit of the
great lexicographer had been perturbed by certain
trifling puns or vefbal witticisms with which the
breakfast-table had been amused ; but his ponder-
ous criticism has always seemed to me to be quite
as applicable to the ill-advised speakers and writers
who And the English language inadequate to the
full expression of their teeming thoughts, and who
are therefore forced to filch phrases from foreign
tongues.

ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN.

173

The habit of dropping into French, for example,
is as enfeebling as the habit of punning ; and the
one is quite as fairly to be considered a violation
of the sanctities of the mother-tongue as the other.
Either habit indicates a certain flabbiness of fibre,
intellectual as well as ethical. It is difficult to be-
lieve either in the moral rectitude or in the mental
strength of a man or of a woman addicted to the
quoting of odd scraps of odd French. When we
take up the latest work of a young-lady-novelist,
and when we find scattered through her pages
soubriquet, and double-entendre, and nom de plume,
and a Voutrance, and other words and phrases
which no Frenchman knows, we need not read
further to be sure that the mantle of Jane Austen
and George Eliot has not fallen on the shoulders
of the fair author. Even Mrs. Oliphant, a novelist
who is old enough to know better, and who has
delighted us all with her charming tales of truly
English life, is wont to sprinkle French freely
through her many volumes, not in her novels
only, but even in her unnecessary memoir of Sher-
idan, whom she credits with gaite du cceur. In
his 'Letter to Young Contributors,' Colonel Hig-
ginson gave sound advice to the literary tyro when
suggesting that he should ** avoid French as some
of the fashionable novelists avoid English.''

174

PEN AND INK.

Has any one ever noted that there is a far greater
fondness in England for French words and phrases
than there is in America ? Whether I am the dis-
coverer or not, the fact seems to me to be beyond
question. In the new Grand Hotel in London,
which is supposed to be managed on the Ameri-
can plan, more or less, but which has a name bor-
rowed from Paris, the very gorgeous dining-room
is labeled SaUe i Manger. In another English
hotel 1 saw a sign on what we call the ** elevator,"
and the English, with greater simplicity, term a
**lift/' declaring it to be an ascenseur. The port-
able fire-extinguisher familiar to all Americans as a
** Babcock," is in England called an extin£teur. On
the programmes of the itinerant opera company
managed by Mr. Mapleson, and called, comically
enough, Her Majesty's Opera, the wig-maker and
costumer appear as the perruquier and the coS"
tumier. In the window of a shop in Regent
Street, toward the end of the season, 1 saw exposed
for sale a handsome china tea-service in a hand-
some silk-lined box, bearing in its cover two little
placards, that to the right declaring that it was
suitable for A Wedding Present, while that on the
left suggested its fitness as Un Present De Noces.
In another English shop I have seen a heap of nap-
kins surmounted by a placard setting forth the

ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN.

175

price of these serviettes, and not far off was a pile
of oddly named serviette-rings. But perhaps this
is not more painful than a sign still to be seen in
New Bond Street, declaring that the house to which
it is affixed is occupied by ** Blank et Cie., Artistes
in Corsets." This, in the language of the wild
Western humorist after he had been to Paris, frappe
tout chose parfaitement froid !

Of course it cannot be denied that certain French
words (and not those only which came over with
the Conqueror) have fairiy won a right of domicile
in England. Ennui, for example, and pique — these
have no exact English equivalents, and their re-
moval from common speech would leave an aching
void. (To denouement I shall recur later.) But
why should we speak of an emplqyi when the
regularly formed ** employee" is at our service?
And what evil spirit possesses Mrs. Tompkins, the
London milliner, and Miss Simkins, the London
dressmaker, to emblazon their golden signs with
the mystic "Mdme. Tompkins, Modes," and
''Mdlle. Simkins, Robes"? And here occasion
serves to protest, with whatever strength may in
me lie, against the superfluous rf which British cus-
tom has injected into the French contractions for
Madame and Mademoiselle. We say British, for
this error is confined to Great Britain and her co-

>,S A_J ,_ . _ I

176 PEN AND INK.

lonial dependencies, the inhabitants of the United
States of America having happily escaped it. In
America, as in France, Madame and Mademoiselle
are contracted to Mme. and Mile., and it is only
the Briton who writes Mdme. and Mdlle., in the
fond belief that he has caught the exact Parisian
touch. I venture to hint also that even after a
French word has been admitted into the English
language, the Englishman is inclined to recall its
foreign origin in pronouncing it, while the Ameri-
can treats it frankly as an English word. Thus
charade has nearly the same sound in the mouth
of an educated Englishman that it has in the mouth
of a Frenchman, whereas it falls from the lips of
an American as a perfect rhyme for " made." And
in like manner trait retains its French pronuncia-
tion in Great Britain, while in the United States it
is spoken as it is spelt — to rhyme with " strait."
The pun in the title of Dr. Doran's ' Table Traits,
with something on them,' wholly evades an
American unfamiliar with the British usage. But
the American who girds at this English peculiarity
must remember that he has heard his fellow-citi-
zens call a menu a '* maynew," and a debut a
* * debyou " ; and that some of them are in doubt
whether depot ought to rhyme happily with
''Aleppo," or haply with "teapot," and there-

ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN.

177

fore compromise illogically by rhyming it with
"sweep oh ! "

To the ignorant and aflfected misuse of French
or quasi-French, there is another kind of snob-
bishness closely akin and deserving castigation as
severe. It is the use of the native name of a place,
or worse yet, of the French name, instead of the
English. What sort of figure would be cut by a
returned traveller who described his journeys and
his sojournings in Italia and Deutscbland? Is it
not as bad to speak of Mainz? and worse still, of
Mayence ? — when there is an honest English name,
Mentz, inscribed in a hundred lusty chronicles of
illustrious wars? And how often do we hear
ladies talk of Malines lace, meaning the while the
lace made at Mechlin, — for the town is Dutch,
although the French have chosen to give it a name
of their own fashioning, as they have also to Mentz
and many another city.

It may be as well to note that the French phrase
is i outrance, that there is no u in sobriquet, and
that the French know no such expression as nom de
plume or double-entendre, the nearest approach to
the one being nom de guerre and to the other d(m-
ble entente, a. double meaning, which is, however,
wholly devoid of the ulterior significance attached
to double-entendre. Perhaps the word most sinned

1 78 PEN AND INK.

against is artiste. There is really no excuse what-
ever for the use of this word in English speech.
It is the exact translation and complete equivalent
of the English word artist, and it does not mean
a'female artist any more than pianists means a
female pianist. 1 can now recall with a shudder
a programme thrust into my hand at a watering-
place two or three years ago, in which a certain
charming artist was announced as ''the greatest,
living lady pianiste in the world." Encore, although
used in English in a sense wholly different from
that which it has in French, has now taken out its
naturalization papers ; and so has a hybrid word
parqiiette used in America to indicate what the
English call the stalls or orchestra chairs.

But on the stage, or rather in writings for and
of and about the stage, there is an enormous con-
sumption of French phrases, or of phrases fondly
supposed to be French. The dramatic critic is wont
to refer to the rentree of an old favorite when he
means his or her reappearance ; and he comments
on the skilful way in which M. Sardou brings
about his denoument,— and for this there is per-
haps some excuse, as there is no English word
which is the exact technical equivalent of denote-
ment. But he will record the attempting of a new
role by the ingenue, and he will congratulate that

ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN.

179

€Lty ex comedienne on the enlarging of her repertoire.
To him the ** juvenile lead " is ajeune premier and
the tragic actress is a tragedienne educated at the
conservatoire. In his eyes a ballet-dancer is a
danseuse, and in his ears the comic singer sings a
cbansonnette. There is really no reasoo for this
frequent French ; and although the vocabulary of
the dramatic critic is overworked, with a little care
he may avoid tautology by less violent means.

Over the door of a free-and-easy or cheap con-
cert-saloon near Union Square I have seen a
transparency announcing that the place was a
" Resorte Musicale." And in a theatrical weekly
paper I discovered once an advertisement even
more remarkable. 1 give it here as it stood, chang-
ing only the proper names :

ANNIE BLACK,

The popular favorite and Leading Lady of Theatre

Comique, will be at liberty after June to engage for the season
ef '81-83, as Leading Lady with first-class comb. Also

E. J. BLACK,

(Nee Edward Brown,)

CHARACTER ACTOR.

Please read this carefully, and note the delight-
fully inappropriate use of nee, and the purely pro-
fessional cutting short into *' comb." of the word

I go PEN AND INK.

*' combination," technically applied to strolling
companies. Above all, pray remark the fact that
the gray mare is the better horse, and that the man
has given up his own name for his wife's.

It would not be fair thus to rebuke our fellow-
countrymen without noting the fact that the French
are' nowadays quite as prone to quote English as
the English are to quote French, and also that there
is very little to choose between the results. An
article on sport in a French paper is almost as curi-
ous and macaronic a medley as an article on the
fashions in an English paper. Just as the techni-
cal phrases which hint at the mighty mysteries
of ladies' apparel are all French, so the technical
phrases of masculine outdoor amusement are nearly
all English. The report of a horse-race as it ap-
pears in a Parisian newspaper is quite as comic as
the description of a bride's gown as it appears in
a London organ of society. The French dandy,
who was once a gandin, and who is now a gom-
. meux, is driven to the course in a breach drawn by
a pair of steppers ; on the track he mingles with
the betting^men and makes a booh. Thus he ac-
complishes his duty to society, and is acknowl-
edged to be tout ce quHly a de plus hig-lif. We
are informed and believe that this strange perver-
sion of " high life " is pronounced as it is written,

ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN. i8l

«« -^- — '*

hig-lif. When the French swell is not mingling
with the other iportmen on the turf, he has per-
haps gone to the river to see the ravingmen, or
into some garden to watch the jeunes misses play-
ing Crockett, by which last word the French are
wont to designate the formerly popular game of
croquet. In the summer, or rather in the early
autumn, he varies these amusements by a paper-
chase of some unknown variety, which he compla-
cently calls a raUye-papier.

To see just how far can go this absurd com-
mingling of tongues, complicated by pretematu-
rally ingenious blundering, one must give his days
and nights to the reading of the * Garnet d'un
Mondain,' which the Figaro publishes under the
signature of ** Etincelle." To see how even clever
and well-informed writers may err in bad com-
pany, one must read the always interesting and
often instructive cbroniques which M. Jules Clare-
tie contributed every week to the Temps, and
which were gathered together every year under
the title of * La Vie jI Paris.' M. Qaretie reads
English, and he has travelled in England ; but he
makes repeated use of a hybrid verb — intervnever,
which we assume to be some sort of a Gallicized
interview. Interwiever is the act accomplished by
the reporter — another word which the French

lS2 PEN AND INK.

have snatched across the Oianriel. But interwiever,
bad as it is, and absurd as it is, is not a whit
worse or more absurd than double-entendre and
soubriquet. In fact, the better one knows the
popular misinformation on both sides of the Chan-
nel, the more willingly will one admit that honors
are easy, and that English bad French is no better
and no worse than French bad English.

Ten years ago M. Justin Amero put forth two
little pamphlets full of the most amusing blunders
of the Anglo-Frenchman and the Franco-English-
man. One, ' L'Anglomanie dans le fran9ais et les
barbarismes anglais usites en France,' was intended
to warn those of his fellow-countrymen who
write " Times is money " in the belief that they
are quoting Shakspere; and the other, 'French
Gibberish,' a review showing how the French lan-
guage is misused in England and in other English-
speaking countries, was meant for those who
write coute qui coute instead of coute que coute.

There is an ancient and musty jest about a city
madam who spoke only the French habitually used
in young ladies' schools, and who rendered into
English the familiar ris de veau a la financiere as
"a smile of the little cow in the manner of the
female financier." But this is not more startling
than many other things to be discovered by those

ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN. 183

who search the cook-books diligently. I remem-
ber a bill of fare in an American hotel in which
all the familiar dishes were translated into unfamil-
iar French, the climax being reached when ginger-
snaps, the sole dessert, appeared transmogrified into
gateux de gingembre. Perhaps it is in revenge for
repeated insults like this that the Parisians now
advertise on the windows of the cafes on the boule-
vards that Boissons Americaines are sold within,
the only American drink particularized being a cer-
tain '* Shery Gobbler," warranted to warm the
heart of all vagrant American humorists who may
chance to visit Paris while alive and in the flesh.
In essence sbery gobbler is but little more comic
than rosbif, or than bifteck, which are recognized
French forms of the roast beef of old England and
of the beefsteak which plays second to it. Both
rosbif and bifteck are accepted by Littre, who finds
for the latter a sponsor as early and as eminent as
Voltaire. And sbery gobbler is not as comic as * ' cut-
lete'* and ''tartlete," which I detected day after
day on the bill of fare of a Cunard steamer crossing
from Liverpool to New-York three or four years
ago. When I drew the attention of a fellow-
traveller to the constant recurrence of the superflu-
ous e at the end of cutlet and tartlet, the active and
intelligent steward, who anticipated our slightest

1 84 **EN And ink.

wants, leant forward with a benignant smile, and
benevolently explained the mystery. *Mt's the
French, sir," he said; **cutlete and tartlete is
French, sir ! "

A bill of fare at the Grand Hotel in Paris, in
1885, offered '' Irisch-stew X la franjaise" — truly
a marvellous dish. In a certain restaurant of the
Palais Royal, however, there is a bi-lingual bill of
fare which recalls the Portuguese ' Guide to Con-
versation,' if indeed it does not "break the record."
In this we are proffered our choice of "barbue
dutch manner "(barbued la HoUandaise), or " eel
in tartar," or of "a sole at Colbert." We may
have " beef at flamande "or *' beef at mode " (bomf
a la mode), or *'beefsteack with haricots." The
cotelette saute a la minute appears as " one mutton
chop at minute, " and a cotelette de cbevreuil appears
as *' a chops of kid " (sic). We may order, if we
will, a " fillet napolitan manner," or a *' chicken at
Marengo," or a " sweet bread at financiere."

But quite the wildest linguistic freak which ever
came within my ken is the following^otice, copied
years ago from the original as it hung on the walls
of a cheap hotel in New-York frequented by the
smaller theatrical people of all nationalities : *' Mes-
sier et Medammes chaque Diners, soupes, etc., se
que ont portez dan le chambres son chargait k par."

ON THE FRENCH SPOKEN. 185

Of the many amusing stories in circulation and
turning on an English misuse of French, the most
popular is perhaps the anecdote in which one of
two gentlemen occupying an apartment in Paris
leaves word with the concierge that he does not
wish his fire to go out ; as he unfortunately ex-
presses this desire in the phrase " ne laissez pas
sortir le fou," much inconvenience results to the
other gentleman, who is detained in the apartment
as a dangerous lunatic. This pleasant tale has in
its time been fathered on many famous English-
men. And like unto it is another which Ameri-
cans are wont to place to the credit of a Cockney,
while the English are sure that its true hero was a
Yankee — both parties acting on the old principle
of " putting the Frenchman up the chimney when
the tale is told in England." The story. goes
that a certain Anglo-Saxon — for thus I may avoid
international complications — entered into a Paris-
ian restaurant with intent to eat, drink, and be
merry. Wishing to inform the waiter of his hun-
ger he said, "J'ai une femme!" to which the
polite but astonished waiter naturally responded,
*'J'espere que madame se porte bien?" Where-
upon the Anglo-Saxon makes a second attempt at
the French for hunger, and asserts, "Je suis
fameux ! " to which the waiter's obvious reply is,

1 86 PEN AND INK.

** Je suis bien aise de le savoir, monsieur 1 " Then
the Anglo-Saxon girded up his loins and made a
final effort, and declared, ''Je suis femme ! " to
which the waiter could answer only, "Alors
madame s'habille d'une fajon tres-etrange." After
which the Anglo-Saxon fled and was seen no more.
This merry jest came to me by word of mouth
and vouched for by an eye-witness ; but 1 am told
on good authority that it was used by the elder
Charles Mathews in one of his At Homes at least
half a century ago.

POKER-TALK,

E are *'the Romans of the modem
world— the great assimilating peo-
ple." So the autocrat of all the
Americas has declared, proving his
case by offering in evidence our
army sword which * ' is the short, stiff, pointed
gladium of the Romans ; and the American bowie-
knife is the same tool, modified to meet the daily
wants of civil society. " In the armory of the Tower
of London, the attendant used to show a curiously
complicated and many-barreled pistol, and he was
wont to remark that the American, Colonel Colt,
** examined that there pistol very carefully, sir,"
and that ''not long after he went and invented
Colt's revolver, sir." So it is always ; the steam-
boat and the turret-ship, the sewing machine and
the mowing machine, the telegraph and the tele-
phone, all inventions whereon an American may
pride himself, are claimed by others ; even the

187

188 PEN AND INK.

six-shooter of Colonel Colt was invented by Queen
Elizabeth, and the Arkansas toothpick is nothing
more than the Roman broadsword. So it is
especially with all games ; the Canadian Lacrosse
may have come from the Indians ; but the more
national Base-ball is but the British Rounders —
amplified and beautified, it is true. One may
assert as an incontrovertible axiom that no game
is ever invented. Nowadays, at least, the human
mind is unequal to the making of a new one ; a
novel sport is always evolved from some other and
older game, and never from the inner conscious-
ness of man. Even those highly characteristic
products of American ingenuity^ facile Euchre and
fascinating Poker, are not truly American inven-
tions ; they are at most but skilful modifications
or adaptations of earlier games. I know that
when you rob the American of the revolver and
the bowie-knife, when you strip the American
Eagle of both Euchre and Poker, you leave him
'naked indeed ; but the truth must prevail.

The game of Euchre is first cousin to the game
of Ecarte ; probably both are derived remotely from
the game of Triomphe or French Ruff. Cavendish
says that the French settlers in America took Tri-
omphe with them and transformed it into Euchre.
This assertion seems hasty and sweeping, but

POKER-TALK.

189

Euchre has prevailed more particularly along the
Mississippi River^ and it may have been acclimated
there by some Canadian voyageur.

Euchre is not necessarily derived from either
Ecarte or Triomphe, despite the obvious similarity.
The dog and the wolf are strangely alike, and so
are the rose and the cabbage ; and in time, perhaps
both Ecarte and Euchre may be traced back to the
same germ or rudimentary game, from which it
will be shown that they have been slowly evolved,
differentiating themselves in accord with their en-
vironments. There is a precision and a logic about
the Parisian Ecarte which is wanting in the Euchre
of the Mississippi, while the latter has a license and
a rapidity suited to the recreative needs of the hard-
working people of *'a country where," as Mr.
Lowell puts it, "the nomad population carry no
household gods with them but their five wits and
their ten fingers." The chief peculiarity of the
game of Euchre is that it legalizes the dethroning
of the upstart ace and the legitimate king and the
usurpation of the supreme place by the wily jack ;
and that this usurpation is aided and abetted by
the other jack of the same color. It is told that
when the father of a family lay dying in a little
river town of Kentucky he called his sons to his
bedside that he might give a few words of solemn

190 PEN AND INK.

advice for their future guidance in life. ''Boys,"
he said, raising himself on one elbow, and no
doubt recalling a bitter memory of his own youth,
*' when you go down the river to Orleens jest you
beware of a game called Yucker, where the jack
takes the ace ; — it 's unchristian 1 '* And with this
final warning he lay back on his bed and died
in peace. I have always understood that it was
Euchre which the two gentlemen were playing on a
boat on the Missouri River when a by-stander,
shocked by the frequency with which one of the
players turned up the jack, took the liberty of warn-
ing the other player that the winner was dealing
from the bottom, to which the loser, secure in his
power of self-protection, answered gruffly, "Well,
suppose he is — it's his deal, isn't it?" It was,
perhaps, the playing of some remote progenitor
of Euchre that Shakspere had in mind when he
wrote — if I may risk a conjectural emendation and
substitute *' knave" for " king" (obviously logical
and appropriate) —

But while he thought to steal the single ten
The Knave was slyly fingered from the deck.

[Third part of * King Henry VI.,' Act V,, scene ii.]

**Deck" for "pack" is, of course, an American-
ism ; but Shakspere, who could not spell his own

POKER-TALK.

191

name, may perhaps be forgiven for having dropped
into an Americanism now and then.

The pedigree of Poker may be set forth with a
little more certainty than we can declare the
ancestry of Euchre. Mr. Jones — not quite so
sound on Poker as he is on Whist — sees its origin
in a game which the Italians of the Fifteenth Cen-
tury called 11 Frusso. During the next hundred
years this had matured into Primiera, which was
known in Spain as Primero and to Master Francis
Rabelais in France as La Prime. It was closely
akin to two other games which the French called Le
Mesle and L'Ambigu, and to a third which the Eng-
lish knew as Gieek and the French as Le Glic —
cf. Villon's * Ballade de Bonne Doctrine d ceux de
Mauvaise Vie ' :

Gaigne au Berlan, au Glic, aux Quilles,
Ou s*en va tout, ou escoutez ;
Tout au taveme et aux filles.

It crossed the channel to England, where it
passed under a host of aliases, as might have been
expected from a game of such doubtful antecedents.
It was played as Primo, as Primero, as Gleek, and
as Post-and-pair. Of course these games may
have differed not a little in detail, but the vital
principle was identical in all. Allusions to them

192

PEN AND INK.

are abundant in the Elizabethan dramatists. In
Ben Jonson's ' Every Man Out of His Humor ' (Act
I., scene ii.), Qrlo Buflfone tells Sogliardo that ''to
be an accomplished gentleman" he must ** learn
to play Primero." Falstaflf confesses, "I have
never prospered since I forswore myself at Pri-
mero." And in 'Every Man in His Humor' (Act
IV., scene ii.), Wellborn cries, "Here's a trick vied
and revied," as who should say, " Here's a bet,
seen and raised."

If we may rely on the testimony of the play-
makers of the period — and the stage seems to
have reflected the manners of the time more
exactly under Elizabeth than it does now under
Victoria — we may fairly accept Gleek as the favor-
ite pastime of the bold admirals who grappled
bravely with the mighty Armada, on the towering
ships of which the grandees of Spain were playing
Primero to beguile the time till they should sack
London. And no doubt Post-and-pair pleased and
rejoiced the gentleman adventurer ranging the
Spanish Main during the next century, as its off-
spring, Poker, pleased and rejoiced the Argonauts
of '49, who, two hundred years and more there-
after, took possession of a distant possession
of the once magnificent realm of Spain. The
younger band was as reckless as the elder, as de-

POKER-TALK, "^s:^; •: ■'-'^)^^

termined, as unhesitating, and it was fit that they
should recreate themselves with the same game —
a game, too, singularly suited to their character-
istics and to their temperament, and calling for
courage, for insight, for shrewdness, and for a
prompt and certain knowledge of their fellow-
man.

In the course of years Primero seems to have
passed away and Gleek to have gone out of fash-
ion, but Post-and-pair held its own. In 1674
Cotton wrote that "Five Cards is as much played
in Ireland as All Fours is in Kent and Post-and-pair
is in the west of England." Possibly it was from
the west of England that Post-and-pair went fur-
ther **out west" in America and suffered a sea
change in the journey and became Brag. Now
Poker is the child of Brag, and Brag is the child of
Postrand-pair. * * Poker (originally played in Amer-
ica) may be described as developed Brag, though
in some respects it ' throws back ' to the parent
games Post-and-pair, L'Ambigu and Primero," so
Mr. Jones tells us, speaking as one having author-
ity, in the latest edition of the ' Encyclopaedia Bri-
tannica.' But of Poker there are, or rather, there
were, many kinds ; and the first to develop was
Straight Poker. From Straight Poker came Draw
Poker, just as Short Whist came from Long Whist ;

194

PEN AND INK.

and when one says Poker nowadays he means
thereby the more modern and scientific game of
Draw Poker, just as when he says Whist he
means the modern and scientific game of Short
Whist. It was toward the end of the last century
that *' Short Whist started up and overthrew the
Long Dynasty," so we are told by Major A.,
whose book on the subject has been edited by
Professor P. ; but it was not until after the Battle
of Waterloo that the younger game finally van-
quished the older. Many years later was it when
Draw Poker succeeded in supplanting Straight
Poker. Mr. Jefferson Davis, some time President
of the late Confederate States of America, when
charged with being too fond of the fascinating
game while he was an officer of the United States
Army at Prairie du Chien, in 1834, made an-
swer and testified that Draw Poker had not been
then introduced. So far as one may declare on
the insufficient evidence now presented, Draw
Poker came to the front early in the forties and
was spread abroad during the war with Mexico
and generally accepted as the true game of Poker,
before the day when gold was most unexpectedly
discovered in the California which Mexico had
ceded to the United States at the signing of the
peace, and to which there was at once an over-

POKER-TALK.

195

whelming rush of the vigorous youth of America.
By selection and by cultivation a higher type of
game had been developed in the very nick of time,
at the precise psychologic moment when it was
needed for use by the energetic and quick-witted
throng of ardent young men who were about to
wrest vast wealth from the barren hills of the
State which had taken for its motto the happy cry
of Archimedes. When once the myriad possibili-
ties of Draw Poker, its manifold beauties and its
exact fitness for the work in hand began to be
perceived, its future was assured. The fate of
Straight Poker was sealed irrevocably ; there was
nohope for it, although it might lingerfor yet awhile
in outlying corners of the country, as the Britons
tarried after the Saxon invasion and conquest.
Long before the breaking out of the Rebellion it
was evident that Draw Poker had come to stay
and that thereafter Straight Poker, with its ill-
named fellows, Stud Poker and Whisky Poker,
must sink to the level of poor relations, who must
content themselves, like Shakspere's widow, with
the second-best bed.

As one of the brightest jewels in Britannia's
crown is the inventing, or rather the perfecting, of
Whist, so the development of Poker is one of the
chief glories of Columbia. The ancestry of Poker

196 PHN AND INK.

has been declared above, and it may be well, there-
fore, to note that the lordly Whist was once known
as the humble Swobbers. The new Whist, hav-
ing reached the highest point of perfection, has
been fixed and established by the final codification
of its laws. The new Poker has not yet found its
John Lorraine Baldwin to draw up its rules with the
needful conciseness and certainty. It cannot be as-
serted that the laws of Poker lie hid in night, like
those of Nature before Newton, and of Whist before
Mr. Baldwin, — to use Mr. Hayward's happy fig-
ure, — but they are in darkness and in doubt. At
present Poker may be said to be governed by the
common law, ignorance whereof excuseth no man.
Local usages vary ; contradictory obiter di£la of self-
constituted judges abound; and more than one
important point remains undecided for want of a
written text of the law and of an authorized tri-
bunal. The supremacy of the Straight Flush has
got itself slowly acknowledged at last. Whether
or not Straights beat Threes is still a mooted point ;
the better opinion is that they do, and it is so held
in the proposed code drawn up by the learned
American once resident at the Court of St. James.
There are those who do not recognize Straights at
all ; and there are others who admit the Mississippi
obtrusion of Blazes. The accepted order of the

POKER-TALK.

197

hands at Poker was set forth a few years ago by
my friend, the editor of Ptick, in a mnemonic
table of great international utility. The man of
genius who drew it up was aware that every Eng-
lishman knew the proper precedence of the various
orders of the nobility and gentry, and that every
American knew the relative values of the various
Poker hands. It will be seen, therefore, that while
his invention indicates to the Cockney the hierarchy
of the hands at Poker, it provides the Yankee with
a table of precedence for use in Great Britain and
her colonial dependencies :

IN GREAT BRITAIN.

IN THE UNITED STATES.

A Royal Duke

A Straight Flush

A Duke

Four of a kind

A Marquis

A Full

An Earl

A Flush

A Viscount

A Straight

A Baron

Three of a kind

A Baronet

Two Pairs

A Knight

One Pair

The invention of the Straight Flush (called a
Royal Flush when it begins with the ace and ends
with the ten) and the concession of its absolute
precedence have removed an awkward stumbling-
block from the path of the upright and punctilious
Poker player. There are many possible Straight

198

PEN AND INK.

Flushes and they may be inferior one to another ;
no Straight Flush, however imposing it may be in
appearance, is sure to win, like Tommy Dodd ;
even Mr. John Doe's combined ace, king, queen,
knave, and ten of diamonds may be equalled by Mr.
Richard Roe's united ace, king, queen, knave, and
ten of spades, and the stakes would not fall to
either but must needs be divided between both.
But if there were no Straight Flush, then Four
Aces would be absolute and invincible; and he
who happily held Four Aces would know himself

Quite irresistible
Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a whist-table.

Before the accession of the Royal Flush to the
imperial throne there was often heard an impos-
sible opinion that as Four Aces was *'a sure
thing," no gentleman would bet on them. If
this proposition had been universally accepted
Four Aces, as a hand, ceased to exist practically;
and with this abdication of Four Aces, of course
Four Kings became ** a sure thing " in their turn ;
and by an application of the same logic no gentle-
man would bet on them — which is absurd.

The Royal Flush is not often seen ; like other
exalted monarchs it does not make itself common
in men's eyes. I have played three and four

POKER-TALK.

199

nights in succession without an audience with his
imperial majesty. I have rarely played without
the presence of Fours, two or three times at least
in the course of the evening. There are certain
lewd fellows of the baser sort who are given to
playing Poker with a short pack of thirty-two
cards used for Euchre, Ecarte, and Piquet. The
altitude of the hands one can hold in rapid suc-
cession in this bastard sport is startling enough.
Three of a kind is as nothing, and a Flush is cut
down in the twinkling of an eye. It takes a little
while to get used to the change of the combina-
tions in their relative importance. The greater
frequency of apparently gigantic hands leads many
Euchre players now and again to wish audibly that
they were playing Poker. It is well for them that
their wish is not granted. In the nursery tale the
wood-cutter and his wife, who had three wishes,
did not find them very profitable, and most of
those who express a desire to change for a mo-
ment from Euchre to Poker would find they had
jumped from the frying-pan into the fire.

There is the leading case of the commercial trav-
eller in the Pullman car on the Pacific Railroad. He
had fraternized with a mining millionaire who
owed his fortune to his faculty of taking advan-
tage of an opportunity and of his fellow-man. As

200 PEN AND INK.

the train sped across the prairie they dropped into
a friendly game of Euchre. After they had played
for an hour or so, the millionaire dealt and turned
up a queen, and the eyes of the commercial trav-
eller brightened as he gazed on his hand.

** I wish we were playing Poker," he ventured.

The mine owner looked over his cards and an-
swered not.

** What do you say to changing the game?"
suggested the commercial traveller. *'l should
like to play this hand at Poker."

The millionaire glanced at his cards again and
remarked pleasantly, '*Well, I don't care if I
do; but you must let me discard and take this
queen."

*'0h, certainly," replied the commercial trav-
eller eagerly; **ril bet you fifty dollars on my
hand."

** I will see that and go a hundred better," re-
turned the miner.

The commercial traveller smiled with great glee ;
" ru raise you two hundred and fifty," he said,
counting out four hundred dollars.

"Well," remarked the millionaire calmly, "if
you want to play Poker I'm your man. I'll just
go you a thousand better."

This bold bet somewhat staggered the young

POKER-TALK. 20I

man, but he had confidence and a thousand dol-
lars ; and he called.

* ' What have you ? " asked the mine owner.

*' I have four kings," the young man answered,
throwing them on the board.

'*Then Til take the money," the millionaire re-
marked. ** I have Four Aces," and he threw them
down before the astonished commercial traveller.

** That's all right," said the latter, as soon as he
had caught his breath. "That's all right — the
money is yours ; but I'd like to know why in
blazes did you take that queen ? "

Thus we see that there can be finesse in Poker
even as in Whist.

When the negro, black as the ace of spades,
went to the late Canon Brookfield for a little tem-
porary assistance, he began by saying: *M will
not attempt to disguise from you, sir, that I am a
man of color." And I will not attempt to disguise
from you that the mining millionaire and the com-
mercial traveller were gambling. We may hope
that the loss of his money served the commercial
traveller as a wholesome corrective of the gambling
spirit, which is as different as possible from the
spirit of scientific inquiry and self-improvement
wherein one ought to play Poker. It is to be con-
fessed at once that Poker differs from Whist and

202 PEN AND INK.

from Chess, its chief rivals as an intellectual recrea-
tion, in that it must be played for money. Chess
is usually its own reward ; and Whist can be, and
indeed often is, interesting without the attraction
of added money. But in Poker the stakes must
have a definite pecuniary value or the game sinks
into mere child's play. We play Poker for chips,
and chips must have a specie basis ; in Poker, as in
the larger game of life, an irredeemable currency is
an unmixed evil.

So long, however, as the chips have a money
value, it is of very little importance how small that
value may be. The genuine student and lover of
Poker will play his game, just the same, whether
the chip represents the French centime or the
American double-eagle. The limit of a single bet
may be high or low as the circumstances warrant ;
it should be always at least twenty times the
smallest chip, and this smallest chip should be the
unit of the play, by which I mean it should be ac-
cepted as the proper ante. As it is the limit which
makes the play high or low, this should always be
agreed on first, and then the value of the smallest
chip may be determined. Unless the limit is at
least twenty times the smallest chip, the finest
points of artistic play are not possible, as the bluflf
is barred ; and the power to bluif is an essential

POKER-TALK.

203

part of Poker. A bluff is like the President's veto
— a most valuable device, but to be used sparingly
and only for good cause. With a proper propor-
tion between the limit and the single chip, and a
proper proportion between the money value of
the chip and the private means of the players,
Poker is as free from taint of gambling as any
game can be.

In one of his most thoughtful essays Mark
Twain has recorded the result of a judicial attempt
to discover whether Old Sledge was or was not a
game of chance. The case came before a wise
judge in the far West ; the counsel for the defence
produced a cloud of witnesses who swore that
Old Sledge was a game of skill ; the prosecu-
tion brought forth testimony as abundant that it
was a game of chance ; so modem modification of
the ordeal by battle was accepted as decisive of the
issue. A jury of twelve was impanelled ; six of
the jurors were old players who maintained that
Old Sledge was a game of skill, and six were fool-
ish young men who declared vainly that it was a
game of chance. The jury was locked up ; the six
couples of jurymen played against each other —
Skill vs. Luck. In less than an hour one of the
partisans of chance sent out to borrow more money ;
and before long the jury had agreed on their ver-

204 PEN AND INK.

diet and were unanimously of the opinion that
Old Sledge was a game of skill. So Whist is a
game of skill ; and so is Poker a game of skill.

Poker, like Whist, or the horse, or the annual,
rainfall, or anything else, may be used by the gam-
bler to gamble with ; but Poker in itself is not a
gambling game — it is purely scientific diversion.
The element of chance which the novice may think
paramount is in reality most insignificant. "Prob-
ability is the rule of life," said Bishop Butler, but
in Poker probability is less concerned than in life-
assurance, for example : and there is really no com-
parison to be made between it and any other game
of cards. The proportion of luck to skill in van-
ning at Whist, for instance, is almost exactly re-
versed in Poker ; the cards are quite 75 per centum
of the game at Whist, but in Poker they are not
25 per centum. The most skilful player at Whist
has not 25 per centum advantage over the most
unskilful, but at Poker he has nearer to 75 per
centum advantage. And character tells almost as
much in playing Poker as skill. At its highest.
Poker approaches the experiment in pure science ;
it is study in comparative psychology. In Poker
there are no partners, no trumps turned, no tricks
taken, no score kept, no game to make, and the
cards themselves are of far less importance and

POKER-TALK.

205

significance than the character and temperament
of the players. " The proper study of mankind is
man," and Pope's essay would have been richer in
observation and deeper in its truth had he had
Poker to watch instead of the now obsolete Ombre.
Poker is a true touchstone of character. In great
trials a man generally tries to act as he ought,
while in little affairs he shows himself as he really
is. I know a gentleman who says he will allow
no man to marry his daughter until he has tested
his temper and gained an insight into his character
by playing Poker with him.

And this is the game which Mr. Richard A.
Proctor denounces with a vehemence akin to vi-
tuperation. ** The existence and still more the
flourishing condition of such a game as Poker,
outside mere gambling dens, is one of the most
portentous phenomena of American civilization,"
Mr. Proctor declares, because "the art which
chiefly avails to help the gambler in playing this
game is nothing more nor less than that art of
which the enemy of man is proverbially said to be
the father." The wise wit has told us that *' sin
has many tools, but a lie is a handle which fits
them all," and Mr. Proctor refuses to take up a
game which needs this handle. Mr. Proctor ap-
pears to be lacking in specific levity, as an Ameri-

206 PEN AND INK.

can humorist called it. I fear me greatly that, had
he lived in the days of Swift, he would have in-
sisted on an affidavit from Captain Samuel Gulliver
before accepting that worthy navigator's account
of his voyages. 1 doubt, too, whether Mr. Proctor
would have had much patience with one Charies
Lamb, who was the author of biographies of Liston
and of Munden, in which there is no word of truth,
and who prided himself on being a matter-of-lie»
man. Mr. Proctor seems to be impervious to hu-
mor ; he takes life too seriously, and he judges
Poker too hastily.

In Poker there need be no lying and no deceit.
The essence of a lie is the intent to deceive.
Now in Poker there is no intent to deceive ; there
is an effort to conceal, which is a very different
thing. Even the Bluff, which to Mr. Proctor is
inexpressibly wicked, is not an attempt to de-
ceive ; it is an attempt to drive the other player
off the field, not by deceiving him, but by so rais-
ing the stakes that he will not think the chance of
winning worth the price it would cost. If it were
not for the lying — which exists only in Mr. Proc-
tor's misapprehension of the game — he thinks
Poker is not so bad after all. He comes to ban and
he stays to bless. In the first place, **the prob-
lems connected with the decision whether to stay

POKER-TALK.

207

in or retire on a given hand are very pretty, ' so
he confesses ; and he finds later that one charac-
teristic of the game ''modifies the chances in a
very interesting manner," and that another charac-
teristic * * makes it a really excellent game for non-
gamblers, because calling so largely on the exer-
cise of judgment and also depending so much on
individual character " ; in fact, if the Bluff were
ruled out, and if the chips had no pecuniary value,
it would be one of the best and most amusing of
games. But, as I have tried to show, Mr. Proc-
tor's objection to the Bluff is founded on a misun-
derstanding of its nature; and his objection to
playing for money, so I learn from his later * Whist
Chat,' does not extend to Whist, where "the
chief reason why money is staked is that the game
may be well and truly played." This is not
merely the chief reason why we play Poker with
chips representing money, but it is the only reason.
In the purely mathematical discussion of Poker
Principles and Qiance Laws I sit at Mr. Proctor's
feet ; it is not for me to protest, even though I
think he has dealt harshly with the learned author
of the 'Complete Poker Player,' a treatise not
without faults and yet to be cherished and held in
high honor by all lovers of the scientific game ;
yet I cannot resist the temptation to suggest that

208 PEN AND INK.

Mr. Proctor ought not to have been quite so hard
on the ' Complete Poker Player ' for inadvertently
saying that a player drawing two cards to three
of a kind may get a Pair of a '* denomination dif-
ferent from the Triplet," when he himself, with
like inadvertence, informs us that a " Full of three
aces and two threes beats a Full of three aces and
two deuces." No doubt the assertion is true, but
we should not like to see Mr. Proctor playing
Poker with a pack containing six aces. Nay,
more, if 1 may express the wish at the very bot-
tom of my heart, 1 should prefer not to see Mr.
Proctor playing Poker at all. His mathematics are
all right, but he has no grip on the vital principles
of the game, and I am afraid an expert would find
him deficient both in theory and in practice. In
his later paper he intimates that certain frank
Americans told him that if he ever attempted
the game he would be *' everlastingly beaten." I
know that when his earlier essay appeared there
was, on the part of every Poker player 1 met, a
wild longing to face Mr. Proctor across the green
cloth. I did what 1 could to allay this intense
desire, for 1 knew that such a feeling was not
scientific. But 1 must avow my belief that if Mr.
Proctor had ventured to play Poker his final condi-
tion would have been like that of the delinquent

POKER-TALK.

209

in a certain case which came before a justice of the
peace in a remote South-western State. The ac-
cused had been taken red-handed in the very act
of Poker playing. To him the justice said sternly,
*'You were gambling?" The prisoner smiled
feebly and answered, **No, jedge, no — not gam-
bling." **But," returned the magistrate, "you
were playing for money? " The prisoner replied
meekly, ** No, jedge, no — for chips." ''Exactly,"
the justice continued, ''and at the end of the game
you cashed your chips and got your money?"
The prisoner answered humbly, "No, jedge,
no — at the end of the game I didn't have any
chips ! "

Mr. Proctor is much exercised in his mind as to
the possibility of cheating at Poker, and apparently
he thinks that it is frequent. Just how much false
play there may be at Poker no one can declare pre-
cisely. All that one can say with certainty is that
Poker does not give any greater privileges to the
blackleg than any other game of cards. Robert-
Houdin has shown us how easily the card-sharper
may rob his victim at Ecarte and Piquet. Even at
Mr. Proctor's beloved Whist cheating is neither
difficult nor infrequent. The advantage which an
unscrupulous player may take over a confiding
friend varies from a slight indelicacy to the gross-

,^*r.- 'V '£----»

2IO PEN AND INK.

est fraud. Mr. Hayward records an anecdote of
an English gentleman playing Whist with Count
Rechberg, formerly Secretary of Foreign Affairs in
Austria, and making so desperate, though success-
ful, a finesse that His Excellency uttered an ex-
clamation of surprise, whereupon the gentleman
offered a bet that the Count himself should ac-
knowledge that he had a sound reason for his play;
it was taken and then he coolly said, ** Why, I
looked over your hand." There are many degrees
between a peccadillo like this and the frank card-
sharping of Lord de Ros, whose exposure was ' ' a
temporary discredit to Whist players," Mr. Hay-
ward tells us, "for some of them were unluckily
seduced into acting on the penultimate Lord Hert-
'^' ford's maxim : * What would you do if you saw a
man cheating at cards?' *Bet on him, to be sure.'"
And Barry Lyndon advises us to back a cheat,
of course.

These examples serve to show that there may
be serpents even in those earthly paradises, the
most select London clubs. Mr. Jack Hamlin is a
far more dangerous opponent than Grog Davis.
Aubrey tells us that Sir John Suckling " played at
cards rarely well, and used to practice by himself
abed, and there studied the best way of managing
the cards." Perhaps Sir John was guilty of a de-

POKER-TALK. 211

vice now in fashion in Paris — so we learn from a
recent readable account of * Paris qui joue et Paris
qui triche/ Play is very late at the Parisian clubs,
and some players have a habit of going to bed in
the afternoon so that they may come fresh to the
card-table at night ; a man who does this is said to
jotier le cadavre — play the corpse. From this
same work we learn that another American inven-
tion, ''ringing in a cold deck," has long been
known to French card-sharpers, who are adepts in
posant uneportee. I incline to the belief that Poker
gives the cheat perhaps fewer chances than either
Whist or Ecarte ; there are generally more players,
for one thing, and, for another, there is less to dis-
tract their attention from the dealer. But the oppor-
tunities for trickery are abundant enough in any
game. We had best beware of any player whose
luck is unduly persistent ; in course of time the
Athenians tired of hearing Aristides always called
the Just. However agreeable or liberal he may be,
refrain from playing with him ; fear the Greek
even bearing gifts. The proper attitude toward
the suspected player is that of the German-Ameri-
can in the familiar tale: he finds that he has four
aces in his hand and his first impulse is to bet
heavily ; then he has a touch of caution and he
asks, '* Who dole dem carts ? ". '* Jakey Einstein,"

212 PEN AND INK.

is the answer. **Jakey Einstein?" he repeats,
laying down his hand. ** Den 1 pass out."

At all times we should insist, as did Mrs. Battle,
on the rigor of the game, for nothing so conduces
to cheating as the slovenly play which makes op-
portunity and temptation. The granting of license
leads straight and quickly to the taking of liberties.
The laws should be enforced without fear or favor.
It is not formally prescribed in the code of the
game that the blank card, sent out with every
pack, shall be placed at the bottom after the cut ;
but the custom obtains in the playing of baccarat
in the best French clubs, and it is advocated by
the author of the * Complete Poker Player.' If it
were adopted at Poker and at Whist, dealing from
the bottom of the pack would become difficult, if
not impossible ; Lord de Ros would have found
his occupation gone; and the Rev. Thankful
Smith, of the Thompson Street Poker Qub, when
he "was dealing, and knew by intuition that he
would catch his fifth club," would not have been
able to help himself quite as easily. Another
point to be insisted upon is the showing of all the
hands after a call. All the hands belong to the
table, after a call, and must be shown. It is not
sufficient that a player admits his defeat and
throws away his hand. A card-sharper will some-

POKER-TALK.

21}

times confess that he is beaten if he has been
called before much is bet, because he does not care
to win too often and he prefers to show his hand
only when there is enough profit to make it worth
while. The laws of Poker, as given by Mr. Jones
in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' do not cover
this case.

The man who trumps his partner's ace at Whist
will surely come to a bad end ; and '* the only
excuse for not returning a trump is a fit of apo-
plexy or not having any." The man who plays
Poker with the joker in, and who revels in jack-pots
and who likes to start bucks, is a being quite as
lost to all sense of shame as the man who trumps
his partner's ace or refuses to return his partner's
trump. In the strict rigor of the game (to which
we should cling until we are in rigor mortis),
there is no recognition of the intrusive joker, of
the inexorable jack-pot, or of the itinerant buck,
just as there is no recognition of Blazes, or of
Skips, or of round-the^^rner straights, or of the
** Irish Flush " — five cards of one color but not of
one suit, the acceptance of which has been sug-
gested by the learned Dr. Pole. It cannot be said
too often or too emphatically that the game of
Poker is not like the pursuit of folk-lore, in which
every variant is valuable and suggestive. Like the

214 PEN AND INK.

game of Whist, the game of Poker is now perfect
and complete. No man may now venture to im-
prove on it, under penalty of spoiling its exquisite
symmetry and simplicity.

Jack-pots are most intolerable and not to be en-
dured, because they are wholly contrary to the
true spirit of Poker. The principle of Poker is
the offering of an option at any moment. At
every change in the game a player has three
courses open before him — he may raise, he may
call, he may pass out. For this free-will, the jack-
pot substitutes predestination ; the theory of the
jack-pot is that all the players must come in again
and again until the pot is opened. If a player is
forced into the bastile of a jack-pot, his liberty is
restrained, and he cannot play the true game of
Poker. And when the jack-pot is opened, there
is little or no opportunity for the fine points of
play ; the victory is always to the heavy battal-
ions. So we see that the jack-pot is an illogical
excrescence on Poker ; it is a concession to the
gambling spirit and a substitution of the brute
force of mere chance for the delicate ingenuities of
skill. In its place the game of Jack-pots may be a
good enough game for those who like it ; but it is
not Poker, and it has nothing to do with Poker.
The author of the * Complete Poker Player ' notes

POKER-TALK. 2 1 5

that jack-pots are not popular in the South ; and I
agree with him in his comment that **this last
fact contains much promise, because the South is
the conservative portion of the country, and may
be relied on as the last resort of good sense in
social matters."

The buck is an illegal monstrosity, to be ab-
horred of all good men. It is twin to the jack-
pot. It is to be avoided for the same reasons,
because it is coercive and because it is gambling —
and in the genuine game of Poker, liberty and skill
go hand in hand. No man who takes pleasure in
the sorry pastime known as ''driving the bucks
home " is capable of understanding the beauties of
Poker. Far worse than he, however, is the man
who plays Poker with the joker in. A man who
does that will do an)rthing. To the thoughtful
mind no further argument is needed, beyond this
use of the joker, to prove the existence of a per-
sonal devil and the doctrine of the total depravity
of man. Only a totally depraved man, being
prompted of the devil, could have invented the
joker. There is in Poker, as I have shown, a fit
and proper use for the blank card : it should be
placed under the pack after the cut and before the
deal.

The joker and the Buck, Blazes and Skips, are

2l6 PEN AND INK.

all signs of impure play, and these are often all to
be found in a bastard game, which one may call
Kindergarten-Poker and which bears the same
relation to true Poker that Buftiblepuppy does to
Whist. In Kindergarten-Poker all the rules are
relaxed and all possible varieties and vagaries of
the game are cultivated. Most of the players
never know who dealt nor who holds the age . They
forget when it is their turn to come in and how
much it costs. They never remember how many
cards any one drew, and they are inclined to be
indignant when their request for information on
this point is denied after several bets have been
made. They are always in doubt as to whether
or not a Flush beats a Straight. They are prone
to give aid and information to the enemy by throw-
ing down their cards before it is their turn to do
so; for this crime no punishment can be too se-
vere, and when a player has been convicted of it
and pardoned and sins again impenitently, la mort
sans phrases should be his swift fate.

Kindergarten-Poker, candor compels me to con-
fess, is a great favorite with the ladies ; its license
pleases their libertine souls, and its semblance to
the true game lets them flatter themselves into the
belief that they are actually playing Poker. Mr.
Hayward applies to whist players the anecdote of

POKER-TALK. 2l^

* * the Italian who had the honor of teaching George

ill III. the violin," and who, on being asked by his

le royal pupil what progress he was making, ob-

to served: ** Please your Majesty, there are three

re classes of players : i , Those who cannot play at

)f all; 2, Those who play badly; 3, Those who

rs play well. Your Majesty is just rising into the

second class." This is the outside compliment
that we ought to pay to the most of the ladies
who fancy they play Poker. Woman is inclined
je to be careless — and in Poker carelessness, even

,n t in very little things, is highly dangerous. Woman

n is inclined to be curious — and in Poker curiosity

f is fatal. And yet woman does not fail wholly as

e a Poker player, and this is because her unreason-

j. ing judgment, her feminine intuitions, her illogical

[q insight— to attempt to define roughly one of the

g. i . most precious and delicate of woman's gifts — often

jt ^ enable her to snatch victory in the very moment

r/ of defeat and disaster.

Of the more obvious types of Poker players
three demand and deserve consideration. These
are the Chatterer, the Silent Man, and the Coroner.
The Chatterer is the player who is persistent in
talking, who is given to the spinning of yams,
whose tongue runs on and rattles along in the

jf presence of death or of Four Aces. But the Chat-

2i8 PEN AND INK.

terer is not always a bad player — there is often
method in his madness ; and now and again he is
not swept away by the flood of his own words.
There may be a keen eye and a quick brain above
the rapid tongue, and not unfrequently the Chat-
terer has prescience of the best time for passing
out. The Silent Man rarely opens his mouth save
to put a cigar into it ; he lets his money talk for
him ; he is always ready with his chips ; he rarely
bluffs and he never shows his hand unnecessarily
or reveals a card in it. More frequently than not
he is a winner. He often takes a plain soda or a
glass of sherry when others accept the fragrant
julep or the seductive cocktail. When conversa-
tion becomes general and the game flags, while
the Chatterer is coming to the point of a good
story, he is wont to rap on the table impatiently
and to ask, " Oh, let's play Poker. What are we
here for, anyhow ? " Then everybody comes in
sedately and sorrowfully, and he raises the ante
and they see the raise and he stands pat with a
Full. The Coroner is the player who insists on
holding a post mortem inquest on every departed
hand, '^e are told that talking it over, as the
ladies call it, fighting one's battles o'er, is one of
the best ways of learning Whist ; but in Poker
the habit of holding an inquest on dead-and-gone

POKER-TALK.

219

iften play is insufferable. The Coroner is also given to

le is congratulating himself on hypothetical victories in

irds. supposititious draws. If ifs and ands were pots

)Ove and pans, he'd always have the best of hands.

hat- When he is the dealer, the Coroner is prone to

sing look at the cards he might have drawn had he

save come in ; thus he gives himself the joy of winning

; for many Barmecede pots.

rely General Schenck held that " the main elements

,rj|y of success in the game are good luck, good cards,

not plenty of cheek, and good temper." Of these

Qra good luck is by far the most important. Good

gjit luck is the prime requisite of the good player.

^- Now good luck cannot be acquired by taking

^ile thought ; it is congenital. The lucky man is born

qq4 so, for no one ever achieved luck or had luck

j^^y thrust upon him. Some men pass through life

.^g wreathed with four-leaved clovers and loaded

, jjj down with horse-shoes, while others are born on

Friday, the 13th of May, and have opals given to

^ J them in the cradle. As in the great game of Life,

Qj, so at Poker. And by luck 1 mean no vain super-

^gj stition. To the Poker player as to other wise

^g men, luck is the name of an intangible total of

Qf innumerable influences; chief among these in-

ug^ fluences are the player's state of mind, and es-

^pg pecially the state of his self-confidence. These, of

220 PEN AND INK.

course, are conditions which vary from day to day.
There are others, as inscrutable and as inexorable,
inherent in every man's nature. I have heard it
asserted that the great family of the Rothschilds
never employs an unlucky man. It is not that
they are superstitious; it is that they are keen
enough to see behind the vulgar superstition a
solid scientific fact — the fact that there is always a
real cause for a man's bad luck, though this cause
cannot always be ascertained. In the unlucky
man there is wanting the something which makes
for success. This something may be a suitable de-
fect of temper or of temperament, of character or
of training ; it may be but a little thing in itself,
but it suffices ; the man who has it is unlucky and
he does not succeed ;* vae vi£tisl

Good luck the good Poker player must have, and
good cards ; — and these things are not identical, for
one may have good cards often and lose only the
more, if just then the adversary happens to have
better. Good temper he should have also, and
plenty of cheek — though I do not like this term ;
a resolute self-confidence and a willingness to take
the chances when once they have been calculated,
would serve to indicate better the fourth quality.
The great Poker player is born, like the poet, but
he is also made, like the orator. He must have

POKER-TALK. 221

the dash and the light-heartedness of the French
zouave; he must have the sound knowledge of
life which distinguished the spectacled professors
in the German landwehr; he must have the dogged
resistance of the thin red line of the British infan-
try ; and he must have the ingenuity and tenac-
ity of the veterans of the Army of the Potomac.
Mr. Hay ward applies to the great Whist player ** the
famous passage which Lord Beaconsfield borrowed
of M. Thiers describing the qualifications and re-
sponsibilities of a great commander," and we may
apply it even more aptly to the great Poker player :
** At the same moment he must think of the eve
and the morrow — of his flanks and his reserve ;
he must calculate at the same time the state of the
weather and the moral qualities of his men. . . •
Not only must he think — he must think with the
rapidity of lightning ; for on a moment, more or
less, depends the glory or the shame. Doubtless
all this may be done in an ordinary manner by an
ordinary man ; as we see every day of our lives
ordinary men making successful ministers of state,
successful speakers, successful authors. But to
do all this with genius is sublime."

Poe declared that "the best Chess player in
Christendom may be little more than the best
player of Chess ; but proficiency in Whist implies

y^*'

222 PEN AND INK.

capacity for success in all those more important
undertakings in which mind struggles with mind."
Poe set Whist above Chess because it had more of
the very qualities in the possession of which Poker
surpasses Whist ; I might say, perhaps more ex-
actly, which the ideal Poker player needs more
than the Whist player and has more occasion to
use. The good player, according to Poe, ** ex-
amines the countenance of his partner, comparing
it skilfully with that of each of his opponents ; he
considers the mode of assorting the cards in each
hand ; often counting trump by trump and honor
by honor through the glances bestowed by their
holders upon each. He notes every variation of
face as the play progresses, gathering a fund of
thought from the differences in the expression of
certainty, of surprise, of triumph, or chagrin. . . .
He recognizes what is played through feint, by
the air with which it is thrown upon the table.
A casual or inadvertent word, the accidental drop-
ping or turning of a card, with the accompanying
anxiety or carelessness in regard to its conceal-
ment ; the counting of the tricks, with the order
of their arrangement, embarrassment, hesitation,
eagerness, or trepidation — all aflford, to his appar-
ently intuitive perception, indications of the true
state of affairs."

POKER-TALK.

22J

With obvious changes, this description applies
more exactly to the Poker player than to the Whist
player, for the observations which are of secondary
importance in Whist are a prime necessity in
Poker-

The great Poker players of the world have been
very few ; nature is not lavish with her treasures.
I have heard that Daniel Webster (that steam-
engine in trousers, as the Rev. Sydney Smith
called him), who was a great lawyer and a great
statesman, was also a great Poker player. Before
the perfected pianoforte there could have been no
great pianist ; and we might as well look for a great
pianist trained on the early clavecin, as expect to
find a great Poker player before Gleek and Post-
and-pair and Brag had developed into the perfect
Poker. Else had I suggested that Shakspere would
have been the greatest of Poker players. His large
views of life, his keen insight into the mysterious
play of motive, and his unexampled knowledge of
his fellow-man would have furnished forth a splen-
did equipment for success as a Poker player. It
has been proved to the satisfaction of those offer-
ing the evidence that Shakspere was a lawyer, a
doctor, a traveller, a Jesuit and, in fact, many other
things which he was not. But no one has yet
suggested that he spent the years of his life, which

224 PEN AND INK.

are unaccounted for, as a man well might who had
to live by his wits, in gaming, whereby he earned
his living. The playing of Gleek, if indeed it be a
ruder and more rudimentary Poker, would have
been a fine school for the study of man. This
suggestion explains many allusions in the sonnets ;
yet it is but a supposition, no better than others
which have been seriously urged, and, of a cer-
tainty, no worse. It is open to us to believe that
the wit combats at the Mermaid between Shaks-
pere and Ben Jonson were perhaps a measuring
of wits across the card-table, and that, on the
smaller space as on the larger, Jonson vied and
revied in vain with Shakspere — Jonson ** solid
but slow in his performances," Shakspere, who,
** lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack
about, and take advantage of all winds by the quick-
ness of his wit and invention."

But if Shakspere never had the privilege of play-
ing Poker himself, he has left us the portrait of
one who, had he not lived before there were
either playing-cards or Poker, would have been the
greatest of Poker players — the Mark Antony of
'Julius Caesar.' Cassius calls Antony ** a masker
and a reveller," but he fears " we shall find him
a shrewd contriver." Brutus confesses, *' I do lack
some part of that quick spirit that is in Antony,"

POKER-TALK.

22^

and declares that ** he is given to sports, to wild-
ness, and much company." Caesar, referring to
Cassius, complains that *' he loves no plays as thou
dost, Antony," — and perhaps " he loves not play "
is a new reading not unworthy of consideration.
Antony is magnanimous ; he sees the nobility of
Brutus ; he has a true insight into the characters
of Lepidus and Octavius : each is treated differ-
ently and with equal tact. Antony is both bold
and wily, cunning and courageous. He has
promptness of decision and a swift certainty of
action. Above all, he believes in himself, the first
step toward making others believe in him. Con-
sider the marvellous skill of the speech in the
forum over Caesar's body — surely the best bit of
Poker-talk in the history of the world. To have
seen Mark Antony, — Shakspere's Mark Antony,
not the mere Mark Antony of history, — to have
seen him playing Poker would be an inexpressible
joy to all those who have felt the fascination of the
game. I can hardly imagine a pleasanter Shaks-
perean fantasy than the authorized report of a
game of Poker between half a dozen of Shaks-
pere's men — Mark Antony for one, and jolly Sir
John Falstaff for another ; the merry Mercutio for
a third ; for a fourth the humorous Jacques, who
should suck melancholy from the game as from an

226 PEN AND INK.

^gg ) for a fifth Sir Toby Belch, though perhaps
the knight is over given to cakes and ale, whereas
your true Poker player is sober and gets his sen-
sual pleasure 'out of the game itself; while the
gallant Benedick should be the sixth, with the
sharp-tongued and large-hearted Beatrice looking
over his shoulder.

AN EPISTLE

To (Master 'Brander Matthews, writer, on the occasion of bis
putting forth a book entitled '* Ten and Ink.*'

New London, Conn., Sept. lo, 1888.

Dear Grander:

I have known thee long, and found
Tbee wise in council, and of judgment sound;
Steadfast in friendship, sound and clear in wit.
And more in virtues than may here be writ.
But most I joy, in these machine-made days.
To see thee constant in a craftsman's ways;
That the plain tool that knew thy 'prentice hand
Gath^s no rust upon thy writing-stand;
That no Invention saves the labor due
To any Task thafs worth the going through;
That now when butter snubs the stranger churn.
Plain pen and ink still serve a writer's turn.
Though /, more firmly orthodox, still bold.
In dire default of quills, to steel or gold.
And though thy pen be rubber — let it pass —
A breath of blemish on thy soul's clear glass.

aa7

There is no** writing fluid " in thy pot,
TBut honest ink of nutgaU brew, God wot !
Thou dost not an ek&ric needle ply
And, like a housewife with an apple-pie.
Prick thy fair page into a stenciUplate —
Then daub with lampblack for a duplicate.
Nor thine the sloven page whereon the shirk
With the rough tool attempts the finished work.
And introduces to the sight of men
The Valet Pencil for the Master Pen.

Not aU like thee! in this uneasy age.

When more by trick than toil we earn our wage.

Here by the sea a gentle poet dwells.

And in fair leisure weaves his magic §peUs;

And yet doth dare with countenance serene

To weave them on a tinkling steel machine, \

Where an impertinent and soulless bell

Rings, at each finished line, a jangling kneU.

The muse and I, we love him, afid I think

She MAY forgive his slight to pen and ink.

And let no dull mechanic cam or cog

The lightsome movement of his metres clog;

But oh I I grieve to see his fingers toy

With this base slave in dalliance close and coy.

While in his standish dries the atrid Spring

Where hides the shyer muse that loves to sing.

aaS

Give me the old-time ink. Hack, flowing, free.
And give, ob, give! the old goose-quill to me —
The goose-quill, wbiipering of humility .

It whiipers to the bard: ''Fly not too bight
You flap your wings — remember, so could I.
I cackled in my lifetime, it is true;
Vutyet again remember, so do You.
And there were some things possible to me
That possible to you will never be.
I stood for hours on one columnar leg.
And, if my sex were such, could lay an egg.
Oh, well for you, if you could thus beget
Material for your morning omelette;
Or, if things came to such a de§perate pass.
You could in calm contentment nibble grass!
Conceited bard ! and can you sink to rest
Upon the feather-pillow of your breast?**

Hold, my dear Grander, to your pot of ink:
The muse sits poised upon that fountain' s brink.
Jlnd that you long may live to hold a pen
I'll breathe a prayer;

The world wiU say ''Amen!"

H. C. BUNNER.

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